Race, Kinds and Ontological Commitments: Issues for Social Policy Clarification

abstract   This article attempts to illustrate the continuing need to pay attention to ontological issues connected with the conduct of empirical research and subsequent policy making. Failure to do so leads to the conflation of social constructions with ideas about the thesis of an independent reality. Such category mistakes often lead to dilemmas in which culturally sensitive constructs may, on the one hand, be worthy of study because they do tell us how socially constructed categories do predict social phenomena; but, on the other hand, such constructs may illustrate an unwillingness on the part of the research community to recognize the objective nature of such constructs. Some recommendations are suggested for addressing the social policy consequences of these dilemmas.     

Message Design Logic and Message Goal Structure Effects on Perceptions of Message Quality in Regulative Communication Situations

O'Keefe has suggested that variations in the goal sets individuals choose to pursue and the form of reasoning they employ are sources of variation in message designs. She offered an analysis of the specific consequences of differences in goals (“message goal structure”) and in forms of reasoning (“message design logics”), and shouted how this analysis could be used to describe systematically functional variations in regulative messages. The study reported in this article explored the consequences of differences in message design logic and goal structures for success in regulative communication situations; Messages that differed in these properties were presented to subjects for evaluation on a number of functionally significant dimensions. Level of message design logic was straightforwardly associated with every type of effectiveness that was assessed. Differences in message goal structures had more selective effects on message evaluations, often involving interactions with the level of construct differentiation of the message evaluator.     

Shifting toward cooperative tendencies and forgiveness: How partner‐focused prayer transforms motivation

Several studies tested whether partner‐focused prayer shifts individuals toward cooperative tendencies and forgiveness. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who prayed more frequently for their partner were rated by objective coders as less vengeful. Study 3 showed that, compared to partners of targets in the positive partner thought condition, the romantic partners of targets assigned to pray reported a positive change in their partner's forgiveness. In Study 4, participants who prayed following a partner's “hurtful behavior” were more cooperative with their partners in a mixed‐motive game compared to participants who engaged in positive thoughts about their partner. In Study 5, participants who prayed for a close relationship partner reported higher levels of cooperative tendencies and forgiveness.     

Path Analysis: An Informal Introduction

Researchers from various disciplines use techniques of investigation that are particularly effective in answering questions about specific populations. In this article, the author discusses one technique, path analysis, a model often used in the fields of sociology, economics, and political science.     

Identity Implications of Influence Goals A Revised Analysis of Face-Threatening Acts and Application to Seeking Compliance With Same-Sex Friends

Although politeness theory offers one explanation for how threats to face arise during compliance-gaining episodes, it neither predicts the conditions under which seeking compliance will create multiple face threats nor explains how such threats arise within specific contexts. The authors challenge and revise politeness theory by analyzing potential implications for both parties' face when the logical preconditions for seeking compliance are framed by specific influence goals. In a test of a revised analysis of face threats, young adults imagined asking favors, giving advice, and enforcing obligations with same-sex friends. Perceived face threats, interaction goals, and message qualities varied substantially across compliance-gaining situations defined by these goals. Directions for exploring the identity implications of influence goals across relationships and cultures are discussed.     

The Effect of Religiosity on Tax Fraud Acceptability: A Cross-National Analysis

Religion provides an important basis for social integration and the prevention of deviant behavior, such as tax fraud, a crime that costs society billions of dollars in lost revenue. The literature on tax fraud and tax fraud acceptability (TFA) has neglected religiosity as a social bond that may deter this type of behavior. Furthermore, existing work is based on the United States; there are no systematic cross-national studies. In particular, there is no research exploring the "moral communities" hypothesis that religiosity's effect on deviance will vary according to the strength of national moral communities. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature by analyzing data on 45,728 individuals in 36 nations from the World Values Surveys. We control for other predictors of TFA, including social bonds, economic strain, and demographic factors. The results determined that the higher the individual's level of religiosity, the lower the TFA. Results on the moral community's hypothesis were mixed. However, in a separate analysis of individual nations, the presence of a "moral community" (majority of the population identifies with a religious group) explained 39 percent of the variation in the presence or absence of the expected religiosity-TFA relationship. Furthermore, the presence of a communist regime in a nation, often known for the oppression of religious groups who then may view the regime as illegitimate, diminished the impact of religion on TFA.     

A PRACTITIONER-BASED ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWER JOB EXPERTISE AND SCALE FORMAT AS CONTEXTUAL FACTORS IN SITUATIONAL INTERVIEWS

Since the first published Situational Interview (SI) study (Latham, Saari, Pursell, & Campion, 1980), research has shown practical and psychometric support for the usefulness of this behavioral interview method. However, such studies have often failed to distinguish the effects of "interview context" factors, such as the SI's behaviorally anchored scale and the use of job expert interviewers on SI ratings. To aid HR managers interested in adopting a behavioral interview system, this study examined the contributions of the SI's behaviorally anchored scale and the interviewer's job expertise to the interrater agreement and accuracy of ratings of situational questions. Two police samples (job content experts) and a student sample (naive raters) showed that ratings of videotaped interviews for police sergeant/lieutenant positions based on the SI scale were significantly superior to those gained using a more traditional rating format, and that job experts did not produce better ratings than naive raters.