Social contexts: transcending their power and their fragility

For more than four decades, my colleagues and I have examined how social contexts and individuals influence each other. To provide a perspective on this work, I describe some lessons we have learned: situational influence exemplifies both the power and fragility of social contexts; common aspects of settings underlie their power, for better and for worse; individuals' health and well-being is affected by powerful forces in eight domains; and intervention programs are powerful settings that encompass risks as well as rewards. I then note some unresolved questions, such as how to balance the risks and rewards of powerful environments, how to better understand the interplay between individuals and the social contexts they select and create, how to learn from the fact that many people overcome the power of traumatic social contexts, and how to apply our knowledge to balance the risks and rewards of individual and community contexts.     

Zulu mothers' beliefs about their own and their children's intelligence

Zulu women (N = 133) were given a structural interview concerning their own and their children's multiple intelligences. The best predictor of their own self-estimated overall intelligence rating was mathematical and spatial intelligence. Mothers showed few significant differences in their estimates of their sons and daughters' overall or multiple intelligences. However, they rated their daughters' interpersonal intelligence higher than those of their sons, and their sons' bodily-kinesthetic intelligence higher than those of their daughters. The mothers believed that overall their children were about 6 IQ points more intelligent than themselves. Although mothers estimated their own spatial, inter-, and intrapersonal intelligence to be higher than those of their children, they also believed that their children had higher mathematical intelligence.     

Parents' disclosure of their own concerns to their adolescent children

This study examines middle-aged parents' disclosure about their own lives and current concerns, with their late-adolescent children. Three hundred seventy-two parents of college freshmen, averaging 47 years of age, participated by filling out an anonymous questionnaire that asked about 28 topics, varying in intimacy, of concern to adults. The subjects indicated whether they had discussed each topic with their child, and, if they had, the motivations that prompted them to do so. The data revealed that mothers disclosed more than did fathers, and they were more likely to cite “venting,”“asking advice,” and “seeking emotional support” as reasons for disclosure; fathers were more likely to cite “trying to change his/her behavior” as a rationale for disclosure. Child's gender did not affect disclosure rates, but sons and daughters were disclosed to for different reasons. Divorced parents disclosed more than did parents from continuously intact families, and they cited somewhat different reasons for disclosure.     

How young adults address their parents reflects their perception of parenting

A speaker's use of a title for the listener shows the speaker's deference to the listener. Previous studies suggested that the use of kinship terms in the family also shows deference to the listener. The present study focused on young adults' use of kinship terms for their parents to investigate whether their use of kinship terms reflects their perception of their parenting. The participants were 329 Japanese college students, who answered a questionnaire about their forms of address for their parents, perceived parental emotional accessibility, and perceived parental control. They also reported their satisfaction with their parent–child relationships and the frequency of parent–child communication. The results suggest that young adults who use kinship terms for their parents perceive their parents to be more emotionally accessible and communicate with their parents more than those who do not. Young adults who use kinship terms for their father are also more satisfied with their father–child relationships than those who do not. Young adults' use of kinship terms might signal not only their deference to their parents, but also their acceptance of their parent–child relationships.     

Subjective attributes of attraction: How people characterize their liking,their love,and their being in love

Ninety-nine students (mostly women) at a German university were asked to write down how they could tell that they like someone, love someone, and arc in love with someone (or, in other words, what characterized each sentiment if experienced by them). A taxonomy of 47 characteristics (or indicators) was developed to code the responses for each of the three sentiments. Most frequently mentioned were positive mood in the other's presence (61 % for liking and 53% for love) and arousal (62% for being in love). The most distinctive (or unique) characteristic of liking was desire for interaction with the other; of love, trust in the other; and of bcing in love, arousal. Categorizing the characteristics into a cognitive, an affective, and a behavioral level, a complex pattern of main effects and interaction effects was found through analyses of variance. Gender differences were found but are not discussed because of the small male sample (n= 13). Our findings are discussed with respect to the scales developed by Rubin, Hatfield, and Sternberg, and they are placed in the context of recent research on subjective definitions of attraction sentiments (especially love).     

Helping children apply their knowledge to their behavior on a dimension-switching task

To investigate why 3-year-olds have difficulty in switching sorting dimensions, children of 3 and 4 years were tested in one of four conditions on Zelazo's card sort task: standard, sleeve, label and face-up. In the standard condition, children were required to sort blue-truck and red-star cards under either a blue-star or red-truck model card, first by color or shape, and then by the other dimension. Here 3-year-olds sorted correctly until the dimension changed; they continue to sort by the initial dimension. The sleeve condition (placing the sorting cards in an envelope prior to sorting) had little effect. In the label condition, the child labeled the relevant sorting dimension on each trial. Most 3-year-olds succeeded; evidently their labeling helped them refocus their attention, overcoming ‘attentional inertia’ (the pull to continue attending to the previously relevant dimension). In the face-up condition, attentional inertia was strengthened because sorted cards were left face-up; 4-year-olds performed worse than in the standard condition. We posit that attentional inertia is the core problem for preschoolers on the card sort task.     

Young children use their hands to tell their mothers what to say

Children produce their first gestures before their first words, and their first gesture+word sentences before their first word+word sentences. These gestural accomplishments have been found not only to predate linguistic milestones, but also to predict them. Findings of this sort suggest that gesture itself might be playing a role in the language‐learning process. But what role does it play? Children's gestures could elicit from their mothers the kinds of words and sentences that the children need to hear in order to take their next linguistic step. We examined maternal responses to the gestures and speech that 10 children produced during the one‐word period. We found that all 10 mothers ‘translated’ their children's gestures into words, providing timely models for how one‐ and two‐word ideas can be expressed in English. Gesture thus offers a mechanism by which children can point out their thoughts to mothers, who then calibrate their speech to those thoughts, and potentially facilitate language‐learning.     

Expressions and their Representations

It is plausible to think that our knowledge of linguistic types can bejustified by what we know about the tokens of these types. But one then hasto explain what it is about the relation a type bears to its tokens that makespossible the move from knowledge of the concrete to knowledge of theabstract. I argue that the standard solution to this difficulty, that the relevant relation is instantiation and that the transition is inductive generalization, is inadequate. I propose an alternative, according to which tokens are representations of the type they belong to. I also defend this view against the charge that it cannot account for the systematic ambiguity of expressions like 'word' or 'sentence', and the objection that it leads to an implausible form of Platonism.     

Vegetarians and their Children

abstract There are estimated to be five million vegetarians in the United Kingdom and another four million in the United States. There are numerous vegetarians elsewhere in the world: around fifteen million, for instance, in India. Some of these vegetarians are parents. And some of the vegetarian parents will bring up their children to be vegetarian, too. Is this a permissible course of action? Or should vegetarian parents raise omnivorous offspring? In this article, I consider three arguments that aim to show that a parent should not raise a child on a vegetarian diet. None of these arguments are convincing and I know of no better ones — so I conclude that it is permissible for a parent to raise her child as a vegetarian.     

Individuals and their environments

While affirming Craig Martin's analysis of how the language of spiritual freedom celebrates individual agency in a way that deflects attention from the institutional conditions that produce individuals, this essay wonders whether there are useful distinctions to be made among people who Martin reads as sharing uncritical appraisals of capitalist individualism. On the question of the relationship between individuals and social contexts, for example, William James's assessment of the role played by social and natural environments might distinguish him from contemporary subjects who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious" and who seek to transcend institutional constraints to gain personal freedom. Different responses to alienation suggest that there might be some role for individual creativity and criticism as resources for imagining institutional change.