Free to Be Happy: Economic Freedom and Happiness in US States

While the measurement of subjective well-being and its usefulness as a policy objective is a matter of contention, a burgeoning field of happiness economics is emerging. This paper examines the relationship between the institutions of economic freedom and happiness as reported by respondents to the Generalized Social Survey (GSS) in the United States. GSS responses are matched via geocode to state of residence. This allows individual responses in the GSS to be matched to institutional characteristics of the state of residence. A novel contribution of this study is that analysis of the effect of economic freedom on reported happiness is conducted both at the individual level and using state averages. It is found that the level of economic freedom in US states has a positive effect on both individual reported happiness and state average happiness. Dynamic panel analysis is also conducted both as a robustness check and in an effort to control for endogeneity. This confirms the relationship as positive and is suggestive of a causal positive impact of economic freedom on average state happiness.     

Developing an informational tool for ethical engagement in medical tourism

Background

Medical tourism, the practice of persons intentionally travelling across international boundaries to access medical care, has drawn increasing attention from researchers, particularly in relation to potential ethical concerns of this practice. Researchers have expressed concern for potential negative impacts to individual safety, public health within both countries of origin for medical tourists and destination countries, and global health equity. However, these ethical concerns are not discussed within the sources of information commonly provided to medical tourists, and as such, medical tourists may not be aware of these concerns when engaging in medical tourism. This paper describes the methodology utilized to develop an information sheet intended to be disseminated to Canadian medical tourists to encourage contemplation and further public discussion of the ethical concerns in medical tourism.

Methods

The methodology for developing the information sheet drew on an iterative process to consider stakeholder feedback on the content and use of the information sheet as it might inform prospective medical tourists’ decision making. This methodology includes a literature review as well as formative research with Canadian public health professionals and former medical tourists.

Results

The final information sheet underwent numerous revisions throughout the formative research process according to feedback from medical tourism stakeholders. These revisions focused primarily on making the information sheet concise with points that encourage individuals considering travelling for medical tourism to do further research regarding their safety both within the destination country, while travelling, and once returning to Canada, and the potential impacts of their trip on third parties. This methodology may be replicated for the development of information sheets intending to communicate ethical concerns of other practices to providers or consumers of a certain service.

     

Adolescent adaptation before,during and in the aftermath of the Great Recession in the USA

This study examines the impact of the “Great Recession” (from December 2007 to June 2009) on 8th and 10th graders in the USA, using annual nationally representative data from the Monitoring the Future study. Historical changes in youth adjustment (self‐esteem, depressed mood, risk taking, aggression and property crime), school achievement (grade point average [GPA], time spent on homework and educational expectations) and structured and unstructured activities (volunteering, employment, sports and evenings out for fun) were examined between 1991 and 2014. Overall, there were only slight changes in mean levels of adjustment, achievement and most youth activities. However, the percentage of youth working during the school year did decline during the Great Recession. Several longer‐term trends were also evident, though not directly tied to the Great Recession. These include an increase in GPA, a decrease in time spent on homework, rising educational expectations and more time spent volunteering. Future work should assess how the shift to unpaid work activities (e.g. volunteering and internships) among youth is impacting the transition from school to work in the contemporary economy, and whether the Great Recession had deleterious impacts for younger children or among youth whose parents lost work or had their homes foreclosed.     

A Socioecological Approach to Relational Demography: How Relative Representation and Respectful Coworkers Affect Job Attitudes

Purpose

This paper advances a socioecological perspective toward understanding the relationship between demography and job attitudes by considering the joint effects of individual ethnicity and ethnic group relative representation—the degree to which an individual’s own demographic group is represented similarly in their organization and the community in which the organization is located.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Hierarchical polynomial regression analyses of census and survey data from 57,000 employees of 142 hospitals in the United Kingdom suggest that ethnic group relative representation is related to ethnic minority employees’ job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

Findings

An asymmetric pattern emerged wherein the effect of under-representation on turnover intentions was stronger than the effect of over-representation. Moreover, the effects of relative representation varied with respectful treatment by coworkers; relative representation had little effect on attitudes of employees who reported low levels of coworker respect but generally enhanced attitudes when respect was high.

Originality/Value

This work points to the meaningful role that socioecological factors can play in what are typically considered to be intraorganizational phenomena, thereby highlighting the need for organizational research to assess relevant aspects of the communities in which organizations are embedded.

     

Running on Empty: The Effects of Aggregate Travel Stress on Team Performance

Purpose

In this study, we explore the effects of travel on performance at the team level using conservation of resources (COR) theory as an explanatory mechanism. We investigate the effects of aggregate travel stress, which we define as the accumulated strain experienced by a team when traveling, on key components of team functioning and performance including team task performance, team concentration level, and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB).

Design/Methodology/Approach

We analyze 3054 games played in the National Football League across six seasons using multilevel structural equation modeling. Replicating our findings, we also analyzed an additional 11,802 games played in the National Basketball Association across five seasons.

Findings

Aggregate travel stress, as a latent construct, negatively impacts team task performance and team concentration level. Team concentration partially mediates the relationship between aggregate travel stress and CWB.

Implications

Findings suggest that travel has a deleterious effect on various forms of team functioning and performance. As a result, organizations and leaders need to be aware of the potential side effects of travel, and researchers need to further incorporate travel into models and examinations of workplace stress.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to provide a theoretically driven investigation of the effects of business travel on team outcomes and to apply COR theory to team-level phenomena. Results put forth offer a more nuanced understanding of the effects of travel as well as open up new avenues of exploration for COR theory.

     

Religion and Mestrovic's postemotional society: the manufacturing of religious emotion

Work on the social theory of emotion has been growing in the last decade, but few have considered how these studies relate to the field of religion. This article is a detailed critical examination of the work of the Croatian–American sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic and his idea of ‘postemotionalism’. It is an exploration of the implications of his work for understanding contemporary manifestations of religion. It first unfolds the context of Mestrovic's work on postemotionalism and then explores the development and meaning of the term. It follows a series of tensions in the concept between spontaneous and produced emotion and seeks to show how postemotionalism fails to consider adequately religious history, which has continually involved the process of repackaging ‘past emotions’. Despite these difficulties, Mestrovic's idea of postemotionalism is seen to provide not only a way to rethink emotion and rationality in religion, but a way of re-conceptualising so-called ‘individual’ religious emotion as part of wider political constructions developed through late capitalistic markets and the technology of mass media. Mestrovic's lack of concern with religion is considered, and the work of the French sociologist of religion Danièle Hervieu-Léger on ‘chain memory’ is introduced as a way of illuminating questions of religious tradition, memory and emotion in Mestrovic's work. The final section of the paper considers the ‘revivalist’ developments of Celtic Spirituality as an example of the micro-politics of postemotional religion.     

Objectivity and the supernormal: the limitations of bracketing approaches in providing neutral accounts of supernormal claims

This paper contends that bracketing approaches to the sociological study of supernatural, paranormal, and occult proponents do not truly ‘bracket’ the reality-claims made by those being studied, but instead impose ontological limits on what can be considered ‘supernormal’. It is argued that such boundaries and definitions tend to rule out alternative ontological perspectives of the kind that researchers typically encounter among religious, paranormal, and occult proponents. It is also argued that, unlike earlier reductionist approaches to the supernormal, the bias of bracketing approaches is not necessarily based on an underlying sceptical outlook of researchers, but rather reflects an inherent ontological limitation within the sociological enterprise itself. It is recommended that bracketing should be replaced by a reflexive, dialogical approach that emphasises the ontological positioning of social analyses with respect to supernormal claims.     

Terrorism and the Uses of Terror

“Terrorism”' is sometimes defined as a “form ofcoercion.” But there are important differences between ordinary coercion and terrorist intimidation. This paper explores some of those differences, particularly the relation between coercion, on the one hand, and terror and terrorization, on the other hand. The paper argues that while terrorism is not necessarily associated with terror in the literal sense, it does often seek to instill a mental state like terror in the populations that it targets. However, the point of instilling this mental state is not necessarily coercive or intimidatory: one can try to instill terror as an act of punishment, or as an expressive or therapeutic act, or because one values the political consequences that might follow, or because one thinks terror is preferable, from an ethical point of view, to the inauthentic complacency that characterizes the targeted population at present. Though this paper asks questions about the definition of “terrorism,” these questions are not asked for their own sake. The quest for a canonical definition of “terrorism” is probably a waste of time. But asking questions which sound like questions of definition is sometimes a fruitful way of focusing our reflections on terrorism and organizing our response. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

False feedback increases detection of low-prevalence targets in visual search

Many critical search tasks, such as airport and medical screening, involve searching for targets that are rarely present. These low-prevalence targets are associated with extremely high miss rates Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner (Nature, 435, 439?C440, 2005). The inflated miss rates are caused by a criterion shift, likely due to observers attempting to equate the numbers of misses and false alarms. This equalizing strategy results in a neutral criterion at 50?% target prevalence, but leads to a higher proportion of misses for low-prevalence targets. In the present study, we manipulated participants?? perceived number of misses through explicit false feedback. As predicted, the participants in the false-feedback condition committed a higher number of false alarms due to a shifted criterion. Importantly, the participants in this condition were also more successful in detecting targets. These results highlight the importance of perceived prevalence in target search tasks.     

The effects of local prevalence and explicit expectations on search termination times

In visual search tasks, the relative proportions of target-present and -absent trials have important effects on behavior. Miss error rates rise as target prevalence decreases (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, Nature 435, 439-440, 2005). At the same time, search termination times on target-absent trials become shorter (Wolfe & Van Wert, Current Biology 20, 121-124, 2010). These effects must depend on some implicit or explicit knowledge of the current prevalence. What is the nature of that knowledge? In Experiment 1, we conducted visual search tasks at three levels of prevalence (6%, 50%, and 94%) and analyzed performance as a function of "local prevalence," the prevalence over the last n trials. The results replicated the usual effects of overall prevalence but revealed only weak or absent effects of local prevalence. In Experiment 2, the overall prevalence in a block of trials was 20%, 50%, or 80%. However, a 100%-valid cue informed observers of the prevalence on the next trial. These explicit cues had a modest effect on target-absent RTs, but explicit expectation could not explain the full prevalence effect. We conclude that observers predict prevalence on the basis of an assessment of a relatively long prior history. Each trial contributes a small amount to that assessment, and this can be modulated but not overruled by explicit instruction.