Googling in Fear: Measuring Moral Panic Using Internet Searches Before and After Obama’s 2008 Election

ABSTRACT

The rhetoric, rumor, and hostility that surrounded the election of Barack Obama in 2008 appeared to correspond with the notion of a “moral panic.” However, systematically measuring phenomena like moral panics, which are volatile and dispersed in nature, can be difficult. This paper utilizes Google search data combined with other sources to examine the reaction to the candidacy and initial election of Obama. Given the nature of this particular panic, we hypothesize that panic-induced searches will be greater in states with a larger presence of Evangelical Protestants and consumption of conservative media outlets. Results from a series of generalized least squares time-series and two-stage regression models demonstrate that searches related to “socialism” and the “Antichrist” grew significantly around Obama’s election, indicating Obama’s “folk devil” status and a growing moral panic. Additionally, the intensity of the panic appears to be moderated by religious cultures and media consumption. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.     

Remarriage As A Trigger of Parental Alienation Syndrome

Maladaptive efforts to adjust to remarriage can provoke or exacerbate parental alienation syndrome. The remarried parent, the other parent, the stepparent, and the child each may contribute to the disturbance. Underlying dynamics include jealousy, narcissistic injury, desire for revenge, the wish to erase the exspouse from the child’s life in order to “make room” for the stepparent, competitive feelings between the exspouse and stepparent, the new couple’s attempt to unite around a common enemy and avoid recognition of conflicts in the marriage, the child’s attempt to resolve inner conflict, and parent-child boundary violations. These dynamics are discussed and suggestions for treatment are offered.     

Money Doesn't Buy Happiness,but It Helps: Marital Satisfaction,Psychological Distress,and Demographic Differences Between Low- and Middle-Income Clinic Couples

The characteristics of 51 very low-income and 61 middle-income couples receiving services from a university-based community clinic offering a sliding fee scale were compared on a number of demographic variables. Group differences were significant with the exception of the number of children and wife's ethnicity. Middle-income couples were better educated, more likely to be full-time employed, less likely to be from a minority group, older with longer relationships, and more likely to present with family problems. Middle-income couples also had significantly lower scores on the General Severity Index of the Brief Symptom Inventory and higher scores on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. The relevance of these differences for clinicians is discussed.     

Sex education for parents using behavior rehearsal

Abstract

In reviewing the family assessment literature, there appears to be a need for behaviorally based report procedures capable of describing important aspects of family functioning. Thus far, most activity in this direction has involved the development of methods of evaluating marital relationships with relatively little attention to parent-adolescent assessment. This article introduces an adaptation of the Areas of Change Questionnaire (originally developed for work with marital pairs) for the assessment of parent-adolescent relationships. The potential utility of this instrument in clinical and research efforts is described, and initial psychometric evaluations are presented.     

Deepening our counseling

Abstract

The counselor deepens his therapeutic work by analyzing what happens during the counseling session. Subtle details in the off ice interactions are used to refer to personality traits and behavioral patterns manifesting themselves in the client's daily life. The counselor must also be sensitive to his own feelings and reactions and employ these as indicators to objective elements in the client's personality.     

Interracial Couples: Situational Factors in White Male Reactions

Two problems in the measurement of prejudice are the theoretical orientation underlying its measurement and the sensitivity of prejudice measures to social desirability. Most previous studies of prejudice have either not attempted to use sexual threat as a measurement model or have been plagued by other measurement problems. By introducing an unobtrusive procedure that overcomes those measurement problems, this study has tested a sexual-threat model as well as an incentive-conflict model. It was found that sexual threat does affect responses to interracial couples but that those responses are also affected by the value support that interracial couples provide for white norms, as predicted by incentive conflict.     

Fundamentos filosóficos de las terapias de la atribución

RESUMEN

La teoría de la atribución trata de las reflexiones conscientes de las personas sobre sus propias acciones y las de los demás, y las explicaciones que se inventan para justificar estas acciones. Este trabajo está escrito con el convencimiento de que la teoría tiene un papel práctico que jugar en estos y otros campos de la problemática social, pero que para comprender, desarrollar y consolidar este papel es esencial apreciar qué tipo de innovaciones hay esta teoría y cuáles son sus límites. La teoría se basa en dos presupuestos básicos, 1) que las personas hacen atribuciones, 2) que es posible hacer distinciones y generalizaciones en los tipos de explicaciones que, por lo general, se inventan, esto es, podemos clasificar de forma exhaustiva los tipos de ideas concebidas por la gente para explicar acciones.     

Seeing the Whole Picture

Much of what we need to plan for our survival is already known, but what we know, how we know, and who knows is divided up between disciplines. Thus much of the problem of ensuring our survival is a matter of learning across the disciplines. We identify four modes through which we bring disciplinary knowledge together: the unity of science, integrated assessment, heuristic models, and distributed learning networks. Although none of them are perfect, we can learn how to put our knowledge together across the disciplines much better than we do.