Is religion more of an integrative or a divisive force in contemporary societies? We use multilevel analyses of World Values Survey data from 77,409 individuals in 69 countries to examine how both the percent of the population that is religious and the religious heterogeneity of a country are related to generalized social trust, the willingness of individuals to trust “most people.” When we first examine the main effects of the percent religious and religious heterogeneity we find no evidence that either variable is related to trust in the ways predicted by major theories. However, the combination of these two variables has a huge negative relationship with trust. Countries that are both highly religious and religiously heterogeneous (diverse) have, on average, levels of trust that are only half the average levels of countries with other combinations of these two variables. The results have important implications for understanding the role of religion in modern societies. 相似文献
Moderation analysis has many applications in social sciences. Most widely used estimation methods for moderation analysis assume that errors are normally distributed and homoscedastic. When these assumptions are not met, the results from a classical moderation analysis can be misleading. For more reliable moderation analysis, this article proposes two robust methods with a two-level regression model when the predictors do not contain measurement error. One method is based on maximum likelihood with Student's t distribution and the other is based on M-estimators with Huber-type weights. An algorithm for obtaining the robust estimators is developed. Consistent estimates of standard errors of the robust estimators are provided. The robust approaches are compared against normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood (NML) with respect to power and accuracy of parameter estimates through a simulation study. Results show that the robust approaches outperform NML under various distributional conditions. Application of the robust methods is illustrated through a real data example. An R program is developed and documented to facilitate the application of the robust methods. 相似文献
In the construction of composite or summary social indicators/indices, a recurrent methodological issue pertains to how to weight each of the quality-of-life/well-being components of the indices. Two methods of composite index construction that have been widely applied empirically in recent decades are Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is based on an optimization principle, and the equal weights/minimax (EW/MM) method, which has been shown to have minimax statistical properties in the sense that it minimizes maximum possible disagreements among individuals on weights. This paper applies both of these methods to two empirical datasets of social indicators: 1) data on 25 well-being indicators used in the construction of state-level Child and Youth Well-being Indices for each of the 50 U.S. states, and 2) data on indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment, and income used in the construction of the United Nations Human Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) for 188 countries. In these empirical contexts, we study issues of measurement sensitivity of the EW/MM and DEA methods to the numbers of indictors used in the construction of the composite indices and corresponding issues of robustness. We find that the DEA method is more sensitive to the numbers of component indicators than the EW/MM method. In addition, the composite indicators formed by the EW/MM and DEA methods become more similar as the numbers of indicators in the composites decreases. We also apply Chance-Constrained DEA method to reclassify countries in the HDI dataset by levels of human development. The resulting human development groupings of the DEA composite indices have a large overlap with those of the HDI in the Human Development Reports, which are based on fixed cut-off points derived from the quartiles of distributions of the HDI component indicators.
Based on Berry's (1997) theoretical framework for acculturation, our goal in this study was to examine whether the use of a culturally relevant coping strategy (i.e., forbearance coping, a predictor) would be associated with a lower level of psychological distress (a psychological outcome), for whom (i.e., those with weaker vs. stronger identification with heritage culture, a moderator), and under what situations (i.e., lower vs. higher acculturative stress, a moderator). A total of 188 Chinese international students completed an online survey. Results from a hierarchical regression indicated a significant 3-way interaction of forbearance coping, identification with heritage culture, and acculturative stress on psychological distress. For those with a weaker identification with their heritage culture, when acculturative stress was higher, the use of forbearance coping was positively associated with psychological distress. However, this was not the case when acculturative stress was lower. In other words, the use of forbearance coping was not significantly associated with psychological distress when acculturative stress was lower. Moreover, for those with a stronger cultural heritage identification, the use of forbearance coping was not significantly associated with psychological distress regardless of whether acculturative stress was high or low. Future research and implications are discussed. 相似文献
Why are American landscapes (e.g., housing developments, shopping malls) so uniform, despite the well-known American penchant for independence and uniqueness? We propose that this paradox can be explained by American mobility: Residential mobility fosters familiarity-seeking and familiarity-liking, while allowing individuals to pursue their personal goals and desires. We reason that people are drawn to familiar objects (e.g., familiar, national chain stores) when they move. We conducted 5 studies to test this idea at the levels of society, individuals, and situations. We found that (a) national chain stores do better in residentially mobile places than in residentially stable places (controlling for other economic and demographic factors; Study 1); (b) individuals who have moved a lot prefer familiar, national chain stores to unfamiliar stores (Studies 2a and 2b); and (c) a residential mobility mindset enhances the mere exposure and familiarity-liking effect (Studies 4 and 5). In Study 5, we demonstrated that the link between mobility and familiarity-liking was mediated by anxiety evoked by mobility. 相似文献
What values do parents want to transmit to children? The intersubjective model of value transmission posits that parents want to transmit not only the values they personally endorse but also the values they perceive to be normatively important in the society. The present research shows support to this premise. Furthermore, Studies 1 and 2 revealed that the use of perceived norms is moderated by families' social contexts and parents' personality: It was particularly pronounced among parents who were immigrants, who had a stronger need for closure, and who were more conforming. In addition, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that parents' perceived norms can explain actual value transmission: Values parents perceived to be normatively important were to some extent internalized by children. The intersubjective model paves some new directions for value transmission research, contributes to the understanding of cultural transmission and cultural change, and extends the intersubjective approach to culture. 相似文献