Did Divorces Decline After the Attacks on the World Trade Center?1

The attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, was an act of terrorism that had many potential influences on the city and state, including influences on families. We analyzed divorce data from 1991 to 2005 for all 62 New York counties to assess divorce response to the attack on the WTC. The results suggested that there were lower observed divorce rates in New York following the attack on the WTC than the prevailing 10‐year cubic divorce trend would have predicted. We also compared counties in and around New York City to those farther away, and we compared metropolitan to nonmetropolitan counties in New York. In metropolitan counties, divorces were lower in the predicted direction.     

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF MEASUREMENT EQUIVALENCE WITH THE INDCOL MEASURE OF INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM: IMPLICATIONS FOR VALID CROSS-CULTURAL INFERENCE

The INDCOL measure of individualism and collectivism ( Singelis et al., 1995 ) has been used increasingly to test complex cross-cultural hypotheses. However, sample differences in translation, culture, organization, and response context might threaten the validity of cross-cultural inferences. We systematically explored the robustness of the INDCOL, for various statistical uses, in the face of those 4 threats. An analysis of measurement equivalence using multigroup mean and covariance structure analysis compared samples of INDCOL data from the United States, Singapore, and Korea. The INDCOL was robust with regard to the interpretability of correlations, whereas differences in culture and translation pose an important potential threat to the interpretability of mean-level analyses. Recommendations regarding the interpretation of the INDCOL and issues in the analysis of measurement equivalence in cross-cultural research are discussed.     

Misperception of sexual and romantic interests in opposite‐sex friendships: Four hypotheses

Two online studies evaluated the misperception of sexual and romantic interests in established relationships and tested four hypotheses: a simple sex‐difference hypothesis, a projection hypothesis, a mate value hypothesis, and a mediation hypothesis. Two hundred thirty‐eight (Study 1) and 198 (Study 2) members of young adult opposite‐sex friendship dyads indicated their sexual and romantic interests in their friend and their perceptions of their friend’s sexual and romantic interests in them. Participants projected their own levels of sexual and romantic interests onto their opposite‐sex friend, mediating the following effects: males overperceived and females underperceived their friends’ sexual (but not romantic) interest, and participants of both sexes misperceived the sexual (but not romantic) interest of friends depending on the friends’ mate value.     

社会支配倾向研究述评

社会支配倾向是社会支配理论中的一个概念,它反映了个体期望内群体优于和支配外群体的程度。高社会支配倾向者偏好加大不同群体间的阶层差异,并期望优势群体更多地支配劣势群体;低社会支配倾向者偏好缩小不同群体间的阶层差异以增加社会平等,并期望优势群体更少地支配劣势群体。因此,社会支配倾向会影响社会不平等的程度,并可以被用来解释偏见的形成。性别和群体地位等情境因素会对社会支配倾向产生影响,而且社会支配倾向与个体间的支配也是有关系的     

Rethinking Boundary Ambiguity from an Ecological Perspective: Stress in Protestant Clergy Families

Family researchers have virtually ignored the families of clergy as a population of interest. Their unique social ecology, however, can offer a profitable case study in family stress. The genesis of Boss's (1977, 1987) boundary ambiguity construct will be reviewed and critiqued. Bronfenbrenner's (1979) approach will then be applied to the boundary problems of clergy families. It is argued that an ecological analysis of boundary ambiguity in clergy families will lead to a higher-order understanding of the construct itself.