Children as Research Collaborators: Issues and Reflections from a Mobility Study in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper reflects on issues raised by work with children in an ongoing child mobility study in three sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. There are now 70 school pupils of varying ages involved in the project, but the paper is particularly concerned with the participation of those children 14 years and under. We examine the significant ethical issues associated with working with younger child researchers, and linked questions concerning the spaces open to them in African contexts where local cultural constructions of childhood and associated economic imperatives (which commonly drive family and household endeavour) help shape the attitudes of adults to children’s rights and responsibilities and inter-generational power relations.     

Female Body Image as a Function of Themes in Rap Music Videos: A Content Analysis

A content analysis of rap music videos taken from the end of year countdowns aired on U.S. cable outlets (i.e. BET, MTV, and VH1) was undertaken. The analysis examined the body images of 258 female characters (87.6% Black, 5.8% White, 6.6% other) as a function of the thematic content in the videos (e.g., violence, sex). It was found that, overall, “thin” females were overrepresented in the videos. More interestingly, the body sizes of the female characters varied by three of the four video themes. When the music videos were high in sex, or high in materialism, women were more likely to have smaller body sizes. In contrast, when the videos were high in political awareness, women were more likely to have larger body sizes.     

Effects of age on cross-modal emotion perception

Efficient navigation of our social world depends on the generation, interpretation, and combination of social signals within different sensory systems. However, the influence of healthy adult aging on multisensory integration of emotional stimuli remains poorly explored. This article comprises 2 studies that directly address issues of age differences on cross-modal emotional matching and explicit identification. The first study compared 25 younger adults (19-40 years) and 25 older adults (60-80 years) on their ability to match cross-modal congruent and incongruent emotional stimuli. The second study looked at performance of 20 younger (19-40) and 20 older adults (60-80) on explicit emotion identification when information was presented congruently in faces and voices or only in faces or in voices. In Study 1, older adults performed as well as younger adults on tasks in which congruent auditory and visual emotional information were presented concurrently, but there were age-related differences in matching incongruent cross-modal information. Results from Study 2 indicated that though older adults were impaired at identifying emotions from 1 modality (faces or voices alone), they benefited from congruent multisensory information as age differences were eliminated. The findings are discussed in relation to social, emotional, and cognitive changes with age.     

Experimentally manipulated change in children's proactive and reactive aggressive behavior

The current study assessed the effectiveness of two behavior manipulations created to differentially lower aggressive responses in a laboratory task. It was hypothesized that the reactive anger manipulation would have the greatest effect for reactive aggressive behavior and the instrumental manipulation would significantly affect proactive aggressive behavior and slightly affect the reactive behavior. Fifty participants played pinball in competition for points against an unknown peer, whose responses were actually controlled by the experimenter. Participants could push a noise button, sending the peer an annoying noise; a tilt button, interfering with the opponent's game; or a no answer button, offering a pro‐social alternative to aggression. After playing four rounds, participants were randomly assigned to either a reactive anger or a positive instrumental manipulation group; they then played pinball again for four rounds. Results indicate that the instrumental manipulation significantly lowered aggressive responses for both reactive and proactive behavior. The reactive manipulation effected aggressive responses only for use of the noise button and produced significantly lower levels of anger. Aggr. Behav. 29:215–227, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Imprisoning masculinity

Prisons are characterized by a hierarchical and antagonistic institutional culture. The processes of the managerial and work culture in violent organizations, such as the prison, incorporate an explicit focus on authority and compliance with rigid rules and procedures; in this context, difference attracts harassment and victimization. These processes also encompass the enactment of “ordinary” authority, the normalization of harassment, and the ways in which violence is embedded in routine conversations and explanations (Hearn, 1996; 55). Group relations can function to legitimize, socialize and reproduce the values and practices connected with violence (Morgan, 1987: 185). Thus a focus on peer group relations, between and within groups of officers and prisoners, is critical and may reveal that which we would rather not know: that the functioning of prisons may be actively and significantly counterproductive to their proclaimed task—the reduction of crime.     

Young People's Deliberations on Geographic Mobility: Identity and Cross-Border Relocation

This paper considers how social identities may shape group members' spatial behaviour. Specifically, it reports a small-scale interview study (n  =  30) conducted with young people (17 years of age) living in a Scottish town close to a national border (with England). This border has very little physical presence. However, the psychological significance of a Scottish identification remains strong, and we investigate the ways in which national identities are implicated in young people's deliberations about their future geographic mobility throughout the United Kingdom. Our data suggest that national identity-related considerations are not always salient in our participants' deliberations. Yet, when national identity is salient and mobility is framed in national terms, we find our participants are often cautious about relocating to England. However, our data also suggest that the ways in which a national framing of self and mobility may be consequential is itself diverse.     

Sexism Versus Partisanship: A New Look at the Question of Whether America is Ready for a Woman President

We question the validity of traditional polling about the likelihood of respondents to vote for a woman president and argue that the use of such polls may overestimate sexism and underestimate the role that party identification and individual characteristics play in deciding about whether to vote for a woman president. Our analysis of data collected in May–June 2004 show that many people who say they will not vote for a woman for president would do so if given realistic, specific, political scenarios via head-to-head match-ups with potential candidates. Although survey respondents preferred George W. Bush to Hillary Clinton, the margin between these candidates was close especially considering that Bush had been actively campaigning for months, whereas Clinton had not.     

Gruesome Connections

It is widely recognized that Goodman's grue example demonstrates that the rules for induction, unlike those for deduction, cannot be purely syntactic. Ways in which Goodman's proof generalizes, however, are not widely recognized. Gruesome considerations demonstrate that neither theories of simplicity nor theories of empirical confirmation can be purely syntactic. Moreover, the grue paradox can be seen as an instance of a much more general phenomenon. All empirical investigations require semantic constraints, since purely structural constraints are inadequate. Both Russell's theory of empirical knowledge and Putnam's model-theoretic argument against metaphysical realism illustrate the inadequacy of purely structural constraints.     

Gendered Reminiscence Practices and Self-Definition in Late Adolescence

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in the emotional construction of life-threatening events (LTEs) that were chosen as self-defining by late adolescents. European American college students (41 women, 25 men) whose average age was 19 were selected from a larger sample (n = 139) because they reported at least 1 LTE among 3 self-defining memories. Memory narratives were elicited with a questionnaire (Singer & Moffitt, 1991–1992) and coded for emotional position. As expected, tough, action-packed positions were more prevalent in men's narratives, and compassionate positions were more prevalent in women's narratives. Unexpectedly, narratives that emphasized one's own vulnerability (fear or sadness) were equally prevalent for men and women, and women's emotional discourse was more conditional upon type of event, i.e., deaths vs. assaults. Findings provide the most explicit evidence to date that some gendered reminiscence practices found in prior studies of children are reflected in late adolescents' self-defining reminiscences. Implications are also discussed for a more situated understanding of gendered reminiscence pratices and for theories of identity development.