Mutual friends’ social support and self-disclosure in face-to-face and instant messenger communication

In the present study, we investigated long-term effects of self-disclosure on social support in face-to-face and instant messenger (IM) communication between mutual friends. Using a representative sample of 583 German IM users, we explored whether self-disclosure and positive experiences with regard to social support would dynamically interact in the form of a reinforcing spiral across three measurement occasions. If mutual friends self-disclose today, will they receive more social support 6 months later? In turn, will this affect their willingness to self-disclose another 6 months later? We further analyzed spill-over effects from face-to-face to IM communication and vice versa. We found that self-disclosure predicted social support and vice versa in IM communication, but not in face-to-face communication. In light of these results, the impact of IM communication on how individuals maneuver friendships through the interplay between self-disclosure and social support are discussed.     

A Research Inquiry into Some American Women's Sexual Concerns and Problems

Abstract

The New View of Women's Sexual Problems is supported by findings of the 1993-94 Ellison/Zilbergeld sexuality survey of 2,632 mostly white, college-educated women born 1905-1977 (Ellison, 2000; see questionnaire at www.womenssexualities.com). Sexual experiences of women with previous year sexual partners are reported. The most important sexual concerns or problems in the previous year of 1,637 women are categorized: 34% desire/frequency (low sexual desire, desire discrepancy); 28.5% physical responsiveness (female arousal, orgasm; male partners' erectile difficulties, ejaculatory control); 16% lovemaking (sexual technique); 7.5% finding a partner; < 5% sexual relationship, fertility, pregnancy, STDs/safe sex, the woman's body/health, non-monogamy, orientation; 547 others reported none. Exemplary quotes from respondents are included. Sex therapy for low sexual desire is addressed. Recommended solutions emphasize individual differences and the multidimensionality of sexuality.     

Psychological Correlates of Support for Compromise: A Polling Study of Jewish-Israeli Attitudes toward Solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A representative national sampling of Israeli Jewish adults (n = 550) reported attitudes toward solutions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that were salient in Israeli public discourse in 2002. Negative attitudes toward compromise were associated with zero-sum threat perceptions of the conflict with Palestinians, such that improvement for the Palestinian side can only come at the expense of the Israeli side. Positive attitudes toward compromise were associated with feelings of sympathy toward Palestinians, but, surprisingly, attitudes toward compromise were not associated with feelings of fear toward Palestinians. The possibility is advanced that it is fear of harm to the group, not fear of harm to self and family, that is related to willingness to compromise. Zero-sum perceptions of collective threat were not strongly related to affective reactions, and, contrary to a realist analysis of intergroup conflict, sympathy for Palestinians predicted support for compromise beyond what zero-sum perceptions of threat could predict.     

Timepieces: Components of Survey Question Response Latencies

Political scientists have increasingly found that the time respondents require to answer survey questions is a useful measure of the strength of political attitudes. However, questions remain about the collection, use, and interpretation of response time data— particularly latencies collected during telephone interviews, far removed from the controlled environment of a laboratory setting. This paper uses a theoretical model of question response to decompose survey response time data into three hypothesized elements—components of response time attributable to baseline individual differences, systematic question effects, and the accessibility of the attitudes being targeted. These findings have implications for the study of political attitudes and other mental constructs, as well as practical implications for public opinion survey researchers using response time data.     

Reasons for Reason-giving in a Public-Opinion Survey

This paper explores why respondents to a telephone public-opinion survey often give reasons for answering as they do, even though reason-giving is neither required nor encouraged and it is difficult to see the reasons as attempts to deal with disagreement. We find that respondents give reasons for the policy claims they make in their answers three times as frequently as they give reasons for value or factual claims, that their reasons tend to involve appeals to personal experience, and that they often talk about their thought processes, especially when the evidentiary stakes are high. We then explore several ways of explaining these findings. We suggest that one useful approach is to see the reason-giving in the survey interviews as deliberative, reflexive argumentation of the sort described as `critical thinking. We further suggest that the reason such argumentation is often conducted out loud in the interviews, rather than internally, is that it functions in the service of rhetorical ethos, in particular the need to display the fact that one is human, with human autonomy and agency. Doing this may be particularly important in contexts such as anonymous survey interviews in which people are at risk of being treated like machines.     

Relationships between language structure and language learning: the suffixing preference and grammatical categorization

It is a reasonable assumption that universal properties of natural languages are not accidental. They occur either because they are underwritten by genetic code, because they assist in language processing or language learning, or due to some combination of the two. In this paper we investigate one such language universal: the suffixing preference across the world's languages, whereby inflections tend to be added to the end of words. A corpus analysis of child-directed speech in English found that suffixes were more accurate at cuing the grammatical category of the root word than were prefixes. An artificial language experiment found that there was a learning advantage for suffixes over prefixes in terms of grammatical categorization within an artificial language. The results are consistent with an account of language universals that originate in general purpose learning mechanisms.     

Public Support for Political Compromise on a Volatile Racial Issue: Insight from the Survey Experiment

In 2000, South Carolina officials, after years of political wrangling over the flying of the Confederate flag over the state capitol, finally removed it, placing it at a Confederate monument on the statehouse grounds. Here, via iterative survey experimentation, I look at the public response to the political compromise required to bring down the flag. I show that the public did respond positively to the multifaceted compromise and that black flag opponents were much more likely than white flag proponents to support the compromise. I also show that more white flag proponents can be swayed to support the compromise if they understand that it is supported by a majority of South Carolinians, thus breaking their misperception of the issue. Flag proponents, however, do not respond more positively to compromise simply because it is the by‐product of white and black negotiations. The political process necessarily evokes competitive intergroup attitudes. Can we think about process in a way that redirects these attitudes and makes political compromise more acceptable?     

大连市抑郁障碍的现况调查

了解大连市18岁以上人群抑郁障碍的患病率和分布特点。采用多阶段分层整群随机抽样方法,以复合性国际诊断交谈检查量表(CIDI3.0)对大连市5062名≥18岁城乡居民进行了调查。抑郁障碍的患病率为4.30%,其中男性为3.40%,女性为5.00%,女性高于男性(P0.01);重度抑郁障碍的男性患病率为2.90%,女性为4.40%,女性高于男性(P0.01)。城乡间患病率无显著性差异。不同收入水平的患病率存在差异,收入处于中等水平的人群患病率低于低、高收入者。目前抑郁障碍已经成为迫切需要解决的重大公共卫生问题,关注女性,关注低收入群体,进行健康宣传,提供支持,以便促进家庭及社会的和谐。了解大连市18岁以上人群抑郁障碍的患病率和分布特点。采用多阶段分层整群随机抽样方法,以复合性国际诊断交谈检查量表(CIDI3.0)对大连市5062名≥18岁城乡居民进行了调查。抑郁障碍的患病率为4.30%,其中男性为3.40%,女性为5.00%,女性高于男性(P0.01);重度抑郁障碍的男性患病率为2.90%,女性为4.40%,女性高于男性(P0.01)。城乡间患病率无显著性差异。不同收入水平的患病率存在差异,收入处于中等水平的人群患病率低于低、高收入者。目前抑郁障碍已经成为迫切需要解决的重大公共卫生问题,关注女性,关注低收入群体,进行健康宣传,提供支持,以便促进家庭及社会的和谐。