Placating the Powerless: Effects of Legitimate and Illegitimate Explanation on Affect,Memory, and Stereotyping

In an experimental study involving power differences between groups, the effects of legitimate and illegitimate explanations for power were investigated on measures of affect, stereotyping, and memory. We found that powerless groups reported more positive affect (relative to negative affect) when explanations were provided for their powerlessness, whether these explanations were classified a priori as either legitimate or illegitimate. Members of powerless groups also attributed greater intelligence and responsibility to the outgroup when it was in a position of high power rather than equal power, and these effects on stereotyping were enhanced when explanations for the power differences were provided. Finally, research participants tended to misremember the reasons given for the power differences as more legitimate than they actually were. These results support a system justification theory of intergroup behavior (Jost and Banaji [1994] Br. J. Soc. Psychol. 33:1–27) in that people seem to imbue placebic explanations with legitimacy, use stereotypes to rationalize power differences, and exhibit biases in memory such that the status quo is increasingly legitimized over time.     

Long-term marriage patterns in the United States from colonial times to the present.

The author presents an overview of long-term trends in U.S. nuptiality. "Marriage in colonial North America was notable for being early (for women) and marked by low percentages never marrying....Between 1800 and the present there have been long cycles in nuptiality. Since about 1800, female age at first marriage rose from relatively low levels to a peak around 1900. Thereupon a gradual decline commenced with a trough being reached about 1960 at the height of the baby boom. There then began another, and rapid, upswing in female marriage age. Proportions never married at ages 45-54 replicated these cycles with a lag of about 20-30 years. Since 1880 (when comprehensive census data became available), male nuptiality patterns have generally paralleled those of women. Male marriage ages were higher than those of females with proportions never marrying also usually higher."     

Regulating Global Financial Markets

This paper discusses the role of regulation in the emergence of a global system of linked financial markets. It traces the origins of the internationalization of financial markets to the emergence of new competitive pressures, rooted in changes in the social structures of savings and investment, breaking down both national systems of financial control and international arrangements for monetary and financial co-ordination. These changes have been accompanied and facilitated by a process of international re-regulation, through informal specialist networks. Although these have facilitated the international diffusion of regulatory standards and practices, and attempted to co-ordinate them, they are greatly hampered by espousing the perspectives of the various markets and firms which it is their task to supervise. Together with their minimalist view of the aims of public legitimation and oversight of financial markets, they have proved inadequate to prevent the destabilizing effects of the new global finance on the world economy.     

Motives for suicide--a study of Australian suicide notes

Analysis of a large sample of suicide notes from 262 suicides in Australia found that men less often had escape from pain as a motive for their suicides and more often had love/romantic problems. The suicides of older persons were more often motivated by escape from pain and less often had love/romantic problems.