The Thawing of a Frozen Conflict: The Internal Security Dilemma and the 2004 Prelude to the Russo-Georgian War

While the proximate causes of the 2008 Russo–Georgian war have yet to be satisfactorily investigated, an assessment of an earlier occasion of conflict in South Ossetia in 2004 can lay the groundwork for an analysis of the later war. Like the 2008 war, the 2004 conflict was comprehensible on the basis of the ambitious war plans of opposing sides, but it was ultimately rooted in a security dilemma. The conflict thus provides a precedent for considering how a mix of limited offensive intentions, insecurity, uncertainty, and cognitive shortcuts and misperceptions had the capacity to lead to inadvertent war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia.     

Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality,Parenting, and Motivational Factors

Anecdotal evidence suggests an increase in entitled attitudes and behaviors of youth in school and college settings. Using a newly developed scale to assess “academic entitlement” (AE), a construct that includes expectations of high grades for modest effort and demanding attitudes towards teachers, this research is the first to investigate the phenomenon systematically. In two separate samples of ethnically diverse college students comprised largely of East and Southeast Asian American, followed by Caucasians, Latinos, and other groups (total N = 839, age range 18–25 years), we examined the personality, parenting, and motivational correlates of AE. AE was most strongly related to exploitive attitudes towards others and moderately related to an overall sense of entitlement and to narcissism. Students who reported more academically entitled attitudes perceived their parents as exerting achievement pressure marked by social comparison with other youth and materially rewarding good grades, scored higher than their peers in achievement anxiety and extrinsic motivation, and engaged in more academic dishonesty. AE was not significantly associated with GPA.

Supply Chain Linkages and the Extended Carbon Coalition

Which firms oppose action to fight climate change? Networks of input sourcing and sales to downstream customers ought to propagate and reinforce opposition to decarbonization beyond direct emitters of CO₂. To test this claim, we build the largest data set of public political activity for and against climate action in the United States, revealing that the majority of corporate opposition to climate action comes from outside the highest‐emitting industries. We construct new measures of the carbon intensity of firms and show that policy exposure via carbon‐intensive inputs and sales to downstream emitters explains this large volume of opposition from non‐emitting industries. Sixty‐six percent of U.S. lobbying on climate policy has been conducted by an extended coalition of firms, associations, and other groups that have publicly opposed reducing carbon emissions. Public opposition to climate action by carbon‐connected industries is therefore broad‐based, highly organized, and matched with extensive lobbying.     

Adult violence with the mother and sibling as predictors of partner violence

The present study provides the first available evaluation of how violence with the mother and siblings during adulthood is associated with the occurrence of partner violence in young adults. Because a pattern of reciprocal partner violence is well documented, the authors hypothesized that reciprocal violence would also be found for adults and their mothers and for adults and their siblings. The authors also hypothesized that reciprocal violence with the mother and sisters would explain variance in partner violence even when controlling for other known predictors (poverty, poor family support, stress, anger, low self-esteem). Study participants included 377 college adults (114 men, 263 women; mean age = 24.4 years) who completed questionnaires to report their present violence to and from their mothers, sisters, brothers, and romantic partners. Violence is measured with a modified Conflict Tactics Scale. No sibling gender differences are found in violence reported as adults. Factor analysis confirms good fit for three clusters of reciprocal violence for adults: violence with the mother, violence with siblings, violence with the romantic partner. Violence with the mother and siblings significantly explains variance in partner violence even after controlling for other contextual variables, but only for women. One interpretation of present results is that because women receive less socialization than men to use violence, these two within-family models of violence have more significance for increasing their risk of partner violence. Partner violence prevention programs could include participation of mothers and siblings to enhance development of more peaceful conflict resolution patterns within and outside the family.     

Do Employers Prefer Workers Who Attend For‐Profit Colleges? Evidence from a Field Experiment

This paper reports results from a resume‐based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for‐profit colleges. For‐profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives, such as public community colleges, being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of young job applicants who recently completed their schooling to online job postings in six occupational categories and tracked employer callback rates. We find no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing a for‐profit college relative to those whose resumes list either a community college or no college at all.