Fathers and sons: A study of ego identity across two generations

This study was designed to compare the relative frequencies of the various ego identity statuses across two generations and to determine the nature of the relationship between the identity statuses of fathers and their sons. Male college students and their fathers were given Marcia 's semistructured ego identity status interview. Generational comparisons revealed that the fathers were significantly more likely than their sons to be in the foreclosure category and were significantly less likely than their sons to be in the moratorium and diffusion statuses. No relationship was found between the identity statuses of fathers and their sons. Among the fathers, high levels of education were found to be associated with identity achievement, while low levels of education were associated with identity diffusion.     

Effects of face-to-face restorative justice on victims of crime in four randomized,controlled trials

The growing use of restorative justice provides a major opportunity for experimental criminology and evidence-based policy. Face-to-face meetings led by police officers between crime victims and their offenders are predicted to reduce the harm to victims caused by the crime. This prediction is derived not only from the social movement for restorative justice, but also from the microsociology of interaction rituals (Collins, 2004). Four randomized, controlled trials of this hypothesis in London and Canberra, with point estimates disaggregated by gender, tested the prediction with measures of both successful interaction ritual (apologies received and their perceived sincerity) and the hypothesized benefits of the ritual (on forgiveness of, and reduced desire for violent revenge against, offenders, and victim self-blame for the crime). The meta-analyses of the eight point estimates suggest success (as victims define it) of restorative justice as an interaction ritual, and as a policy for reducing harm to victims.     

Evaluation of a national prison-based treatment program for sexual offenders in England and Wales

Treatment efficacy is described for a sample of sexual offenders who had undertaken treatment in United Kingdom prisons (N = 647) and for a retrospectively selected comparison group (N = 1,910). The outcomes under observation in this study were sexual, sexual and/or violent, and general reconviction. Treatment impact was also examined in relation to offenders' risk of reconviction. The treatment group had slightly lower 2-year sexual reconviction rates than the comparison group, but these differences were not statistically significant. Significant differences were found between the treatment and comparison group for sexual and/or violent reconviction. Further analysis suggested that treatment produced a reduction in the probability of sexual and/or violent reconviction (p <.05) when other relevant variables were controlled for. General reconviction rates were consistently lower in the treatment group, but these differences were not significant.     

Response of short tandem repeat systems to temperature and sizing methods

In capillary gel electrophoresis (CE), changing run conditions such as temperature can result in minor variations in the size determination of an allele. These effects are caused by secondary structure differences that can occur between the amplified sample and the internal standard. The type of method chosen to generate the sizing curve in STR analysis can influence the relationship between estimated allele size and temperature. To better understand the effects of temperature and sizing method on the reproducibility of DNA migration, two fluorescently labeled allelic ladders, CTTv and Y-PLEX 6 were analyzed using the ABI Prism 310 Genetic Analyzer. The default method on the Genetic Analyzer utilizes an electrophoretic temperature of 60 degrees C and a Local Southern method to generate a sizing curve from the fragment migration times of the internal lane standard. In this work, electrophoresis was conducted at 35-70 degrees C using the commercially available POP 4 buffer at pH 8 and two sizing methods, Global Southern and Local Southern, were compared. The slopes of the regression line between estimated allele size and temperature, using either sizing method, were measured in order to demonstrate the temperature sensitivity of migration time and the importance of the operator-chosen method. Our results indicate that the Global Southern method is a better choice in situations where temperature fluctuations can occur. In addition, the temperature dependence of the DNA size estimates using the POP 4 system were compared to results obtained using an experimental buffer consisting of 3% hydroxyethylcellulose at pH 11. These results demonstrate that secondary structure effects are minimized at an elevated pH, increasing the precision of size estimates obtained.     

Institutionalizing Peace: Power Sharing and Post-Civil War Conflict Management

This article examines how power-sharing institutions might best be designed to stabilize the transition to enduring peace among former adversaries following the negotiated settlement of civil wars. We identify four different forms of power sharing based on whether the intent of the policy is to share or divide power among rivals along its political, territorial, military, or economic dimension. Employing the statistical methodology of survival analysis to examine the 38 civil wars resolved via the process of negotiations between 1945 and 1998, we find that the more dimensions of power sharing among former combatants specified in a peace agreement the higher is the likelihood that peace will endure. We suggest that this relationship obtains because of the unique capacity of power-sharing institutions to foster a sense of security among former enemies and encourage conditions conducive to a self-enforcing peace.     

Compliance and Non-compliance with International Human Rights Standards: Overplaying the Cultural

This paper interrogates a ‘positive’ view of culture’s (potential) role in widening compliance with international human rights standards, which (1) concentrates on the ‘cultural’ bases of conflict over rights and, in consequence, (2) focuses primarily on cultural interpretation as a means of achieving greater respect for rights norms. The thrust of the paper is that the relationship between culture and human rights norms is much more complex than this positive perspective implies and, this being so, that some of its claims about the potential benefits of cultural interpretation for widening rights compliance are hard to sustain. I substantiate this argument by exploring five challenges to this approach.     

Facebook,Contestation and Poor People’s Politics: Spanning the Urban–Rural Divide in Cambodia?

Rural internet use, although still limited, is growing, raising the question of how rural people are using social media politically. As a vehicle of communication that permits the rapid transmission of information, images and text across space and connections between dispersed networks of individuals, does technological advance in rural areas presage significant political transformations? This article investigates this question in the light of a poor result for the Cambodian People’s Party in the 2013 elections, and the subsequent banning of the main opposition party, before the 2018 elections. Expanding internet use in rural areas has linked relatively quiescent rural Cambodians for the first time to networks of information about militant urban movements of the poor. Rural Cambodians are responding to this opportunity through strategies of quiet encroachment in cyberspace. This has had real effects on the nature of the relationship between the dominant party and the rural population and suggests the declining utility of the election-winning strategy used by the party since 1993. However, the extent of this virtual information revolution is limited, since neither the urban nor rural poor are mapping out new online political strategies, agendas or identities that can push Cambodia’s sclerotic politics in new directions.     

Dehumanizing representations of women: the shaping of hostile sexist attitudes through animalistic metaphors*

Women are frequently depicted as non-human objects or animals. While female animalization has typically been conceptualized in the psychological literature as communicating a unitary perception of women, linguistic research suggests that there are at least two distinct animalizing linguistic metaphors for women that depict women at opposite ends of a sex-based power differential: ‘women-are-predators’ and ‘women-are-prey’. Are these linguistic metaphors able to shape sexist attitudes towards women? US Male and female undergraduates read an article, which concerned women voters in an election year, containing language that described women as predatory, prey-like, or in a humanized manner (baseline). They then reported their ambivalent sexist attitudes towards women in general. Consistent with both metaphors’ emphasis on sex-based power differentials, both male and female participants, who read about predatory women, exhibited greater agreement with hostile sexist attitudes than participants who read about prey-like women. This study suggests that the continued transmission of animalizing metaphors for women may help perpetuate prejudicial beliefs about appropriate roles for women in society. Media communicators might learn to identify and eliminate the use of the animalizing terms in their own work.