Links Between Adolescents’ Expected Parental Reactions and Prosocial Behavioral Tendencies: The Mediating Role of Prosocial Values

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between adolescents’ social cognitions regarding parenting practices and adolescents’ prosocial behavioral tendencies. A mediation model was tested whereby the degree to which adolescents perceived their parents as responding appropriately to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors was hypothesized to predict adolescents’ tendencies toward prosocial behavior indirectly by way of adolescents’ prosocial values. Adolescents (N = 140; M age = 16.76 years, SD = .80; 64% girls; 91% European Americans) completed measures of prosocial values and of the appropriateness with which they expected their parents to react to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors. In addition, teachers and parents rated the adolescents’ tendencies for prosocial behaviors. A structural equation model test showed that the degree to which adolescents expected their parents to respond appropriately to their prosocial behaviors was related positively to their prosocial values, which in turn was positively associated with their tendencies to engage in prosocial behaviors (as reported by parents and teachers). The findings provide evidence for the central role of adolescents’ evaluations and expectancies of parental behaviors and of the role of values in predicting prosocial tendencies. Discussion focuses on the implications for moral socialization theories and on the practical implications of these findings in understanding adolescents’ prosocial development.     

Attachment to Parents,Social Anxiety,and Close Relationships of Female Students over the Transition to College

The current study examined the process by which attachment to parents influences satisfaction with and ease in forming friendships at college. One hundred seventy-two female college freshmen completed a measure of parental attachment security the summer before their first semester of college (July 2006) and measures to assess satisfaction with and ease in forming close relationships at the end of their first semester (December 2006). Students ranged in age from 18 to 20 years (M = 18.09, SD = 0.33) and were diverse in their racial makeup (30% racial minority). Consistent with predictions derived from attachment theory, secure attachment to parents was positively associated with ease in forming friendships among racial minority and white participants and satisfaction with friendships among minority participants. Moreover, indirect effects of parental attachment security on relationship outcomes through social anxiety were significant for minority participants but not for white participants. Findings may be useful in the development of retention programs targeted at incoming university freshmen, particularly minority students.     

Policy dynamics and the evolution of state charter school laws

Baumgartner and Jones (1993) showed how radically new policies emerge on government agendas as a consequence of exogenous shocks to policy subsystems displacing privileged interests. But how do these policies evolve post-punctuation? In this paper, we present three different models of policy change. Policies may revert to the old status quo if displaced interests re-assert themselves, or they may be “locked-in” by new interests now reaping the benefits. Alternatively, they may incrementally change as lawmakers “learn” how to better meet target population needs, particularly by witnessing how other jurisdictions address similar problems. We test these models with data on change in state charter schools laws over time. We find that whether old status quos are overthrow, and the fate of charter policies when they are enacted, is influenced more by competing political interests, especially interest groups, than elite and public perceptions of broad systemic crises. Yet, we also find that changing demands on the state and learning from the successes and failures of neighboring states also play significant roles.     

Agency Problems, the 17th Amendment, and Representation in the Senate

A prominent change in American electoral institutions occurred when the 17th Amendment to the Constitution established direct election of U.S. Senators as of 1914. How did this change the political agency relationship between the mass electorate and U.S. Senators? We develop theoretical expectations about the representational effects of direct election by a relatively inexpert mass electorate and indirect election by a relatively expert political intermediary, based on principal‐agent theory. The chief predictions are that the representative will be more responsive to the mass electorate under direct election, but will also have more discretion to pursue his or her own ends. We use the 17th Amendment as a quasi‐experiment to test the predictions of the theory. Statistical models show strong support for both predictions. Moreover, the 17th Amendment is not associated with similar changes in the U.S. House of Representatives—as expected, since the amendment did not change House electoral institutions.     

Learning to Cooperate: Learning Networks and the Problem of Altruism

We explore how two populations learn to cooperate with each other in the absence of institutional support. Individuals play iterated prisoner's dilemmas with the other population, but learn about successful strategies from their own population. Our agent-based evolutionary models reconfirm that cooperation can emerge rapidly as long as payoffs provide a selective advantage for nice, retaliatory strategies like tit-for-tat, although attainable levels of cooperation are limited by the persistence of nonretaliatory altruists. Learning processes that adopt the current best response strategy do well only when initial conditions are very favorable to cooperation, while more adaptive learning processes can achieve high levels of cooperation under a wider range of initial conditions. When combined with adaptive learning, populations having larger, better connected learning relationships outperform populations with smaller, less connected ones. Clustered relationships can also enhance cooperation, particularly in these smaller, less connected populations.     

The Democratic Domino Theory: An Empirical Investigation

According to the democratic domino theory, increases or decreases in democracy in one country spread and "infect" neighboring countries, increasing or decreasing their democracy in turn. Using spatial econometrics and panel data that cover over 130 countries between 1850 and 2000, this article empirically investigates the democratic domino theory. We find that democratic dominoes do in fact fall as the theory contends. However, these dominoes fall significantly "lighter" than the importance of this model suggests. Countries "catch" only about 11% of the increases or decreases in their average geographic neighbors' increases or decreases in democracy. This finding has potentially important foreign policy implications. The "lightness" with which democratic dominoes fall suggests that even if foreign military intervention aimed at promoting democracy in undemocratic countries succeeds in democratizing these nations, intervention is likely to have only a small effect on democracy in their broader regions.     

Race, Region, and Representative Bureaucracy

Scholars of representative bureaucracy have long been interested in the linkage between passive representation in public agencies and the pursuit of specific policies designed to benefit minority groups. Research in this area suggests that the structural characteristics of those organizations, the external political environment, and the perceptions of individual bureaucrats each help to facilitate that relationship. Work to date has not, however, sufficiently investigated the impact of region on representation behavior, which is surprising given the emphasis that it receives in the broader literature on race and politics. Drawing on that literature, this study argues that, for black bureaucrats, region of residence is an important moderator of active representation because it helps to determine the salience of race as an issue and the degree of identification with racial group interests. It tests hypotheses related to that general argument in a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 public schools. The results suggest that black teachers produce greater benefits for black students in the South, relative to other regions. A supplementary analysis also confirms the theoretical supposition that race is a more salient issue for Southern black bureaucrats, when compared with their non-Southern counterparts.