Aerial Bombing and Counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War

Aerial bombardment has been an important component of counterinsurgency practice since shortly after it became a viable military technology in the early twentieth century. Due to the nature of insurgency, bombing frequently occurs in and around settled areas, and consequently it tends to generate many civilian casualties. However, the effectiveness of bombing civilian areas as a military tactic remains disputed. Using data disaggregated to the level of the smallest population unit and measured at multiple points in time, this article examines the effect of aerial bombardment on the pattern of local control in the Vietnam War. A variety of estimation methods, including instrumental variables and genetic matching, show that bombing civilians systematically shifted control in favor of the Viet Cong insurgents.     

Maternal Acceptance as a Moderator of the Relation Between Threat to Self Appraisals and Mental Health Problems in Adolescents from Divorced Families

Appraisals about the implications of stressful events that are evaluated as involving a threat to self (negative self-evaluation, negative evaluation from others, rejection by others) have been shown to place youth at risk for the development of mental health problems. This longitudinal study tested a protective-stabilizing interactive model, in which high maternal acceptance was predicted to mitigate the prospective relation between threat to self appraisals and change in adolescents’ mental health problems six months later. Participants were 89 adolescents from divorced families ages 10–12 and residential mothers. Adolescents reported on threat to self appraisals from the most stressful event experienced in the past month. Mothers and youth reported on maternal acceptance and mental health problems. Multiple regression analyses provided support for the protective effects of maternal acceptance on adolescents’ mental health problems. Intervention implications are discussed. Ana Brown is a pre-doctoral fellow in prevention research (NIMH 2 T32 MH18387–19) and doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Research interests include the study of children’s appraisals and responses to stressful events in the prevention of mental health problems. Sharlene Wolchik is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her research focuses on identifying risk and protective factors for children whose parents have divorced. She also has designed and evaluated the efficacy of preventive interventions for children from divorced families and children who have experienced parental bereavement. Jenn-Yun Tein is a research associate professor and Co-Director of the Research Methodology Core of the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her research interests include analyses of mediation and moderation of preventive interventions as well as applications of methodology and statistics in prevention research. Irwin Sandler is a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. His research interests focus on understanding resilience for children exposed to stress and on the development, evaluation and dissemination of programs to promote resilience and prevent mental health problems for children in stress.     

Understanding the development of fundamentalism

We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects in which leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable conditions, rivalry among fundamentalists makes them more extreme.     

Political representation and ethnic conflict in new democracies

Abstract.  This article is an exploratory analysis of the efficacy of parliamentary representation as a means to moderate ethnic conflict in new democracies. The authors agree with many others that the interests of a minority ethnic group are better protected when the group has access to decision makers, can block harmful government policies and veto potentially damaging decisions. Parliamentary representation, however, does not always allow for an effective representation of those who are not in government. Seats in the legislature may be of little use in a parliament where the executive dominates the policy process at all stages. This article focuses on the new democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 2000. The authors use the number of parliamentary seats obtained by minority ethnic parties as their main independent variable and the MAR ethnic protest and rebellion scores as their dependent variables. In addition, they employ the system of government (i.e., parliamentary versus presidential) as a proxy indicator of the degree of influence that parliamentary parties have over decision making. A cross-section-time-series regression analysis shows that the ameliorative effect of parliamentary representation over ethnic conflict is stronger in those legislatures where the ethnic group has effective influence over decision making. It is also shown that representation within national parliaments has no ameliorative effects over violent secessionist conflicts. When the ethnic minority's demands are too radical, parliamentary representation is simply an inadequate instrument.     

On the value of formal assessment of uncertainty in regulatory analysis

The US Office of Management and Budget introduced in 2003 a new requirement for the treatment of uncertainty in Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs) of proposed regulations, requiring agencies to carry out a formal quantitative uncertainty assessment regarding a regulation’s benefits and costs if either is expected to reach $1 billion annually. Despite previous use in other contexts, such formal assessments of uncertainty have rarely been employed in RIAs or other regulatory analyses. We describe how formal quantitative assessments of uncertainty – in particular, Monte Carlo analyses – can be conducted, we examine the challenges and limitations of such analyses in the context of RIAs, and we assess how the resulting information can affect the evaluation of regulations. For illustrative purposes, we compare Monte Carlo analysis with methods typically used in RIAs to evaluate uncertainty in the context of economic analyses carried out for the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Nonroad Diesel Rule, which became effective in 2004.     

Sexual attitudes and behavior of bulimic women: A preliminary investigation

One-hundred and seventeen college-aged women at varying risk for developing bulimia answered a number of questions addressing their attitudes toward and comfort with sexuality as well as their sexual and contraceptive history. Risk for developing bulimia was unrelated to sexual attitudes and weakly related to greater comfort with sexuality. High-risk women reported first engaging in intercourse at earlier ages and were also more likely to engage in risky contraceptive behavior than their lower risk counterparts. Despite their tendency to report a greater number of previous sexual partners, high-risk women currently engaged and expected to continue to engage in sex less frequently than lower risk women. Taken together with previous findings, results suggest that the relationship between risk for bulimia and certain patterns of sexual behavior reflects a general cycle of impulsive and controlling behavior exhibited by high-risk women. Limitations and implications of the present study are discussed.Half-time Editorial Assistant, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. Quarter-time research assistant, University of Kansas. Obtained M.A. and currently working on Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Kansas. Research interests include hope as it relates to personal health beliefs, eating disorders, and sexual attitudes.Obtained Ph.D. in human development from the University of Kansas. Presently studying adolescent pregnancy and parenting.Obtained Ph.D. in behavioral sciences from the University of Chicago. Presently researching item response theory.     

Gender and developmental differences in adolescents' conceptions of moral reasoning

Eighth graders, 11th graders, and college sophomores wrote open-ended essays that characterized their own approaches to moral reasoning. Their essays were scored for the presence of various themes. Students also responded to three dilemmas from the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979). Students then rated their own use of justice and care orientations in moral reasoning, using a previously developed instrument (Ford and Lowery, 1986; Lyons, 1983). Characterizations of moral reasoning became more multifaceted and thorough with grade, and correlated with many traditional measures of moral reasoning. Males and females showed some, but relatively few, differences in characterizing their own moral reasoning, although females tended to respond more thoroughly to the open-ended task. Gender differences, when they occurred, were mostly found on measures that assessed so-called feminine issues or concerns, but not on traditional measures of moral reasoning. Characterizations of moral reasoning clustered into five dimensions, raising questions about the utility of the constructs of justice and care orientations.The first and third authors received financial support from a Ford-Mellon grant made to Carleton College. Results of this study were presented at the 1990 meeting of the Society for Research in Adolescence.Received Ph.D. in Psychology and M.S.E. in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and has research interests in the development of reasoning skills, decision making, and conceptual development.Received Ph.D. in Counseling and Guidance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has research interests in adolescent development and adolescent psychopathology.Received B.A. in Psychology from Carleton College in 1990. Has interests in adolescence and chemical dependence.