Gay-Straight Alliances Vary on Dimensions of Youth Socializing and Advocacy: Factors Accounting for Individual and Setting-Level Differences

Gay‐Straight Alliances (GSAs) are school‐based youth settings that could promote health. Yet, GSAs have been treated as homogenous without attention to variability in how they operate or to how youth are involved in different capacities. Using a systems perspective, we considered two primary dimensions along which GSAs function to promote health: providing socializing and advocacy opportunities. Among 448 students in 48 GSAs who attended six regional conferences in Massachusetts (59.8 % LGBQ; 69.9 % White; 70.1 % cisgender female), we found substantial variation among GSAs and youth in levels of socializing and advocacy. GSAs were more distinct from one another on advocacy than socializing. Using multilevel modeling, we identified group and individual factors accounting for this variability. In the socializing model, youth and GSAs that did more socializing activities did more advocacy. In the advocacy model, youth who were more actively engaged in the GSA as well as GSAs whose youth collectively perceived greater school hostility and reported greater social justice efficacy did more advocacy. Findings suggest potential reasons why GSAs vary in how they function in ways ranging from internal provisions of support, to visibility raising, to collective social change. The findings are further relevant for settings supporting youth from other marginalized backgrounds and that include advocacy in their mission.     

The loss of power: How illusions of alliance contribute to powerholders’ downfall

Though people in positions of power have many advantages that sustain their power, stories abound of individuals who fall from their lofty perch. How does this happen? The current research examined the role of illusions of alliance, which we define as overestimating the strength of one’s alliances with others. We tested whether powerholders lose power when they possess overly positive perceptions of their relationships with others, which in turn leads to the weakening of those relationships. Studies 1 and 2 found that powerful individuals were more likely to hold illusions of alliance. Using laboratory as well as field contexts, Studies 3, 4, and 5 found that individuals with power who held illusions of alliance obtained fewer resources, were excluded more frequently from alliances, and lost their power. These findings suggest that power sometimes leads to its own demise because powerful individuals erroneously assume that others feel allied to them.     

Building Alliances with (In)Voluntary Clients: A Study Focused on Therapists’ Observable Behaviors

This study aimed to compare therapists’ observable behaviors to promote alliances with involuntary and voluntary clients during brief family therapy. The therapists’ contributions to fostering alliances were rated in sessions 1 and 4 using videotapes of 29 families who were observed in brief therapy. Using the System for Observing Family Therapy Alliances, trained raters searched for specific therapist behaviors that contributed to or detracted from the four alliance dimensions: engagement in the therapeutic process, an emotional connection with the therapist, safety within the therapeutic system, and a shared sense of purpose within the family. The results showed that when working with involuntary clients, therapists presented more behaviors to foster the clients’ engagement and to promote a shared sense of purpose within the family. However, in the fourth session, the therapists in both groups contributed to the alliance in similar ways. The results are discussed in terms of (a) the therapists’ alliance‐building behaviors, (b) the specificities of each client group, and (c) the implications for clinical practice, training, and research.     

Alliances,Domestic Politics,and Leader Psychology: Why Did Britain Stay Out of Vietnam and Go into Iraq?

In the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, British Prime Ministers were asked to contribute forces to an American‐led war that was deeply unpopular in the United Kingdom. This presented Harold Wilson and Tony Blair with conflicting incentives and constraints: to support their senior ally or to make policy based upon domestic considerations. Why did Harold Wilson decline to commit British forces while Tony Blair agreed to do so? With situational factors generating conflicting predictions, I argue that investigation of individual‐level variables is necessary. In particular, I suggest that leaders vary systematically in their willingness to subordinate the concerns of constituents to strategic imperatives, and that introducing the leadership style categories of “constraint challenger” and “constraint respecter” can make more determinate the linkage between domestic politics and strategic concerns.     

Coordinated policy action and flexible coalitional psychology: How evolution made humans so good at politics

The observation that politics makes strange bedfellows may be hackneyed, but it is also often true: Politicians and other actors in the policy process routinely align themselves on specific issues with actors with whom they otherwise have broad disagreements. This fits with social psychological research showing that humans have a coalitional psychology that is remarkably flexible, allowing us to feel strong bonds toward the coalitions to which we belong but to also break those bonds and move on to new coalitions when circumstances change. How is this flexibility possible? Here we examine the possible ways in which evolutionary forces helped shape our species’ trademark flexible coalitional psychology, focusing in particular on gene-culture coevolution and cultural group selection. We conclude with some examples of coordinated policy action among erstwhile foes in contemporary politics.