Voting for ‘Sin’ in Kansas

We would like to thank our colleagues Nancy Snyder and William Terrell for comments and suggestions. The assistance of Ron Farha and Michael Webb is gratefully acknowledged, as is the patience of the staff in the Elections Office of the Office of the Secretary of State, Topeka, Kansas. Any errors or omissions are, of course, the responsibility of the authors.     

Correlates of romantic attachment: A path analysis study

A path-analytic study was undertaken to investigate the proposed relationship between physical attractiveness, need for intimacy, self-disclosure, thought about one's dating partner, and reported romantic love. Extrapolations from theories by Murstein (1971) and I. Reiss (1960), and conclusions from other empirical work, provided the background for the assessment of the relationship between the four proposed predictive factors and the development of romantic affect. During the winter of 1977-78 656 college students responded to a survey assessing each of the four predictors and romantic love. Path structures were initially estimated for male and female subsamples. Since few significant sex differences were noted, coefficients were compared for groups of students involved in dating relationships of varying durations. All four predictors were significantly associated with the subjects' self-reported romantic affect toward their dating partner. In all analyses, thinking about one's partner was found to be the most potent predictor. The data suggest the earlier work by Murstein and Reiss offer both testable and productive theoretical foundations for the study of romantic involvement. However, in future work it would be beneficial to (a) search for more numerous and powerful antecedents to romantic love; (b) delineate the specific role of cognitive processes in influencing romantic attachment; (c) compare relationships on criteria other than months of involvement; and (d) seek to examine love from the perspectives of both individuals involved in the dyadic relationship.Received her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State UniversityReceived his Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University.     

Litigation: a threat to obstetric practice?

Claims that the practice of obstetrics is in crisis appear regularly in the media, but evidence for the claims is scarce. This article examines a range of evidence from Australia and overseas and explores the relationship between obstetric practice and litigation. While anecdotal evidence abounds, there is no hard evidence to confirm that litigation is the threat to obstetric practice that many practitioners strongly believe it is. It is likely that such practitioners respond by practising defensive medicine but this is very difficult to measure.     

Psychosocial Resources in First-Year University Students: The Role of Identity Processes and Social Relationships

The investigation involved the assessment of a model predicting that family and university relationship environments are linked with identity processes and identity states (statuses) that predict psychosocial resources among first-year university students. A sample of 351 university students, between the ages of 18 and 21 years, completed measures of psychosocial maturity based on Erikson's notions of ego virtues, a measure of identity processing styles (diffuse-avoidant, normative, and information styles), identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement), measures of family climate (conflict, expression, cohesion), and assessments of university relationships with faculty, advisors, and students. Based on linear structural equations, the model, with some adjustments, had a good fit with the data and demonstrates the complex association between perceived family and school climate, identity formation, and the association with psychosocial resources. The investigation demonstrates how multivariate model testing can be completed to assess some of the complexity suggested by Erik Erikson regarding identity formation. Gerald R Adams is a Professor of Family Relations and Human Development at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. His major interests focus on family relations, identity development, education, and prevention. Michael Berzonsky is Professor of Psychology at State University of New York at Cortland, New York. His major interests are identity styles, social cognition, and adolescent development. Leo Keating is a data analyst at the University of Guelph.     

Learning the structure of a simple rent-seeking game

This paper considers a form of the Tullock imperfectly discriminating rent-seeking game in which the contestants are uncertain about the value of a bias parameter in the probability of winning function. Beliefs about this unknown parameter are not constrained to be static; we consider two methods by which the players' prior beliefs on this parameter can be updated. First, we allow for information to emerge by considering the case in which the game is played twice, with the outcome of the first game known before the second begins. The identity of the winner of the first contest represents information which emerges endogenously that can be used to revise beliefs on the unknown bias parameter. Second, information can be produced outside of the model by an external agency; this gives rise to exogenous learning. We consider the consequences for rent-seeking in each of these two cases.     

Pressure and the division of a public budget

This paper considers the division of a public budget among competing interests. The planner determines the optimal allocation by maximizing a weighted social welfare function. These weights reflect society's attitudes to different recipient groups, and are not constrained to be constant. By exerting “pressure”, the recipients can attempt to manipulate the weights and hence influence the division of the budget. The amount of resources used on pressure, and the effects on the preference weights are calculated. An important parameter in the model is the elasticity of pressure, for which an appropriate estimate is presented from the case of competition for a share of a health services budget in Norway.     

A Classification Tree Approach to the Development of Actuarial Violence Risk Assessment Tools

Since the 1970s, a wide body of research has suggested that the accuracy of clinical risk assessments of violence might be increased if clinicians used actuarial tools. Despite considerable progress in recent years in the development of such tools for violence risk assessment, they remain primarily research instruments, largely ignored in daily clinical practice. We argue that because most existing actuarial tools are based on a main effects regression approach, they do not adequately reflect the contingent nature of the clinical assessment processes. To enhance the use of actuarial violence risk assessment tools, we propose a classification tree rather than a main effects regression approach. In addition, we suggest that by employing two decision thresholds for identifying high- and low-risk cases--instead of the standard single threshold--the use of actuarial tools to make dichotomous risk classification decisions may be further enhanced. These claims are supported with empirical data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study.