Who moves? Elite and mass-level depolarization in Britain, 1987–2001

Over the past two decades the British Labour and Conservative parties have depolarized on economic and social welfare policy, at both the elite and mass levels. We ask the question: Does mass-level depolarization in Britain extend throughout the electorate, or is it confined primarily to the stratum of affluent, educated, and politically engaged citizens? We report longitudinal analyses of British Election Study respondents' policy beliefs and partisan loyalties over the period 1987–2001, and find that depolarization extends across all subgroups in the electorate, as do perceptions of elite depolarization. These effects are (moderately) more pronounced among the electoral subgroups of highly educated, affluent, and politically informed citizens. The findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences, and for differences in representation patterns between Britain and the United States.     

Observing Environmental Destruction Stimulates Neural Activation in Networks Associated with Empathic Responses

The negative impacts of environmental disruption disproportionately affect marginalized and underprivileged communities; thus, the degree to which society is complicit in allowing unchecked environmental destruction to occur has important social justice applications. Although decades of research have sought to understand factors which determine acceptance of environmental destruction, most of this research has been based on self-report surveys. In the present work, we used neuroimaging techniques to examine the neural correlates of environmental concern. To do this, we compared responses to observing suffering dogs with responses to observing suffering ecosystems. Our results extend previous findings which had shown largely overlapping neural response patterns to observing animal and human suffering. Critically, we found activation in regions previously identified as active in empathy processes in response to viewing harm to ecosystems (i.e., without any animals present in the images). We also found relative differences in response patterns between the two types of stimuli: witnessing harm to environments (vs. dog suffering) led to reduced activation in some regions, but similar activation in others. We discuss these findings in terms of their potential implications for behavioral interventions and possibilities for continued neuroimaging research examining neural responses to environmental ecosystems and other nonhuman entities.     

F#ck Your Family!: The Visual Jurisprudence of Automobility

This paper considers the popular visual jurisprudence of bumper stickers. Drawing upon a sample sticker/driver/vehicle assemblages observed at the Gold Coast, Australia in 2014, we argue that the meanings and messages projected by the assemblages have a significant legal dimension. The argument is located at the intersection of past research into bumper stickers, increased scholarly interest in the relation of law to automobility and especially recent considerations of the popular visual jurisprudence of the motor vehicle, its cultures and semiotics. In particular we argue that the sticker/driver/vehicle assemblage represents an engagement with law and legality. We suggest this goes beyond immediate denotations of brands with intellectual property or flags and the sovereign nation state to more essential engagement with consumer capitalisms law of the image, the friend/enemy distinction, the ouroboros of rights and the essential legality of living in a polis.     

Specificity of sibship determination using the ABI Identifiler multiplex system

Fifty known siblings and fifty unrelated pairs were genotyped using the ABI Identifiler STR system and sibship indices computed for each pair. Combined sibship indices (CSIs) for the known siblings ranged from less than 10 to greater than 1 billion. CSIs for the unrelated pairs ranged from 4.5 x 10(-8) to 0.12. In the known sibling group the percentage of loci where both alleles matched was approximately 40%, while the percentage of loci where neither matched was approximately 10%. In the non-sibling group, the percentage of loci where both alleles matched was approximately 6%, while the percentage of loci where neither matched was approximately 45%. Interestingly, the percentage of loci where a single allele matched was the same in both the known siblings and unrelated pairs, approximately 50%.     

Attachment,Coping, and Explanatory Style in Late Adolescence

Using self-report data from 157 college students, we tested hypotheses regarding the relative importance of perceived security in early parental relationships vs. security in adult (nonparental) relationships for understanding respondents' coping dispositions and explanatory styles. In general, more secure attachments were positively related to support-seeking and active problem-solving coping styles and to females' but not males' tendency to explain hypothetical successes and failures in a positive or self-enhancing manner. Security of adult (nonparental) attachments had stronger associations with young women's coping strategies than did security of early attachment to parents, whereas the reverse was true for males—a finding we interpret in terms of girls' earlier development of emotional autonomy from parents and closer ties to friends. Security of early attachment to father appeared to have important implications for young men's willingness to turn to others for support.     

Progressive tax policy and informal labor in developing economies

Governments in many industrializing democracies face difficult policy trade‐offs. Liberalization and informality have placed electoral pressure on them to expand noncontributory social spending. However, governments in developing democracies face constraints when attempting to finance this expansion. In some countries, the informal labor market is very large, thereby undermining the revenue that can be collected through income tax. We argue that this has given rise to a paradoxical situation. Left governments in developing democracies with large informal labor markets have a strong electoral incentive to expand welfare regimes to previously excluded outsiders, but to fiscally underwrite this expansion, they have increasingly been forced to fund their redistributive strategies via a regressive policy instrument, indirect consumption taxation. We examine this argument for a sample of 17 Latin American countries between the years 1990 and 2016. Our results suggest that labor informality forces left governments to turn to indirect taxation.     

The Impact of Television,Electronic Games,and Social Technology Use on Sleep and Health in Adolescents with an Evening Circadian Preference

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - There are mixed findings when examining if technology use is harmful for adolescent sleep and health. This study builds on these mixed findings by examining the...