Not That There’s Anything Wrong with That: The Effect of Personalized Appeals on Marriage Equality Campaigns

An increasingly predominant strategy used by organizations seeking to increase support for gay marriage is to personalize the issue by focusing on individuals in the LGBT community. However, competing theoretical traditions (e.g., Allport??s contact theory, group threat, implicit bias) raise questions about whether this strategy has the desired effect. This paper presents results from an original field experiment conducted in coordination with a marriage equality organization. Callers who self-identified as a member of the LGBT community were less effective in soliciting donations compared to callers who did not self-identify, suggesting that personalization has a negative effect on persuasion efforts. The findings cut against the grain of the Allport (The nature of prejudice, 1954) hypothesis and have important implications for social advocacy organizations in terms of rhetorical and message strategy.     

Media Exposure, Current and Future Body Ideals, and Disordered Eating Among Preadolescent Girls: A Longitudinal Panel Study

Internalization of the thin body ideal is considered by many to account for the relationship between media exposure and disordered eating among girls and young women, but almost all supporting research has employed adolescent and adult samples. Using longitudinal panel survey data collected from 257 preadolescent girls at 2 points in time 1 year apart, we tested relationships between self-reported television and magazine exposure at wave 1 and current (prepubescent) and future (postpubescent) body ideals and disordered eating at wave 2. Controlling age, race, perceived body size, and body ideals and disordered eating measured at wave 1, television viewing at wave 1 predicted increased disordered eating and a thinner postpubescent body ideal at wave 2. In contrast, none of the media variables predicted a thinner prepubescent body ideal at wave 2. These findings suggest that the thin-ideal internalization construct needs refinement to enhance its developmental sensitivity.

The Dual Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de Chile: Class, Race, and a Nationalist Project

This article examines the functions of the "dual discourse" about Peruvian migrant domestic workers in contemporary Santiago. A 2002 field study found that middle-class employers of Peruvian workers simultaneously praised them as superior workers and denigrated them as uneducated and uncivilized. While this response is not unique to Santiago, this study argues that it fulfilled particular ideological functions in this context. The praise served to discipline the Chilean working class, who middle-class employers claimed no longer knew their place. The epithets served as a foil for Chilean national identity. Stories about Peruvians serve as tools in ongoing ideological contestations over class, race, and nation in Chile and, at the same time, shape the working conditions and integration of the migrants themselves.     

DHHS wisely proposed to remove the "consent" requirement from the HIPAA privacy standards. Department of Health and Human Services

The author contends that requiring advance written consent to use and disclose health information interferes with patient care, is unnecessary in view of other rigorous privacy protections, and imposes an unwarranted burden on healthcare providers. Consequently, the author commends DHHS for taking the "practical and apolitical step" of removing this requirement.     

State Support in the Market: Women and Tourism Employment in Post-Socialist Bulgaria

In many former Eastern Bloc countries, economic transition has been responsible for drastic declines the social and economic well-being for both men and women. In general, however, women have tended to experience relatively greater losses since 1989. Through a detailed case study of women's employment in the tourism sector of post-Communist Bulgaria, this chapter will argue that state support for certain economic sectors can help improve the relative economic welfare of women. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this study finds that state support for viable economic sectors with relatively high wages that employ a critical mass of women can help to ease the difficult transition from centrally-planned to free-market economies.     

The use of children's religious ideas in their psychiatric evaluation

Children's religious ideas provide a source of projective material that can be relevant clinically in a child's psychiatric evaluation. Areas that are sometimes revealed include (1) information about the child's parental introjects; (2) level of superego formation; (3) level of defense formation; (4) areas that are most anxiety provoking for the child. This religious material is frequently ignored, but can be a particularly useful adjunct when the usual child-evaluative techniques do not reveal a complete picture.Her psychiatric training included an adult psychiatry residency at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, and a child psychiatry residency at McLean Hospital, Belmont. Presently a candidate in the psychoanalytic institute, and in private practice.Her psychiatric training included an adult psychiatry residency at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, and a child psychiatry residency at McLean Hospital, Belmont. She is also a candidate in the psychoanalytic institute and in private practice.     

Few convictions in rape cases: Empirical evidence concerning some alternative explanations

This paper examines several explanations for the low rate of conviction for rape arrests made in the District of Columbia from 1971 to 1976. Discrimination against female victims does not appear to be a major cause of the problem, nor do rape victims appear more likely than victims of other serious crimes to cause case attrition due to their own unwillingness to continue. Questioning of the victim's credibility, on the other hand, does seem to be more of a reason for case dismissal for rape cases than for other serious crimes. A multivariate analysis of the types of rape cases that do result in conviction yielded eight statistically significant variables. A new perspective on rape cases emphasizing the issues of consent and credibility is presented.     

Growing inequality in black wages in the 1980s and the emergence of an African-American middle class

Much recent scholarship and popular discussion posits a substantial movement of African-American households into the “middle class.” Yet over the course of the 1980s, the proportion of individual black wage-earners receiving “annualized” (work experience-adjusted) wages and salaries in excess of about $35,000—three times the poverty line—fell by 22 percent, even as the share of African-Americans earning below the poverty line increased by a fifth. This was true for all age groups, and even for persons within the black community who had completed four or more years of college. The growth of low wage employment was most pronounced for black men between the ages of 25 and 34, among whom the incidence of below-poverty-level employment doubled. Black women aged 35–54 experienced relatively greater progress than any other part of the African-American community, but their gains lagged far behind those of comparable white women. We speculate on possible explanations for these developments, on the basis of which a potential public policy agenda is examined.