Voter overrepresentation,vote misreporting,and turnout bias in postelection surveys

Figures from postelection surveys often grossly overestimate election turnout. Two distinct phenomena are responsible for this gap: overrepresentation of actual voters and vote misreporting by actual nonvoters among survey respondents. Previous accounts of turnout bias are inconclusive in that they either focus on a single component, or fail to separate between the two. In this paper, we formally decompose turnout bias in election surveys into its constituent parts, assess their empirical prevalence and heterogeneity using an extensive collection of 49 vote validation studies from six countries, and employ Bayesian meta regression techniques to account for cross-study differences. Our results indicate that both election and survey characteristics such as actual voter turnout and survey response rates differentially affect the components of turnout bias. We conclude with a discussion of the threats and potentials of our findings for survey-based comparative electoral research.     

Gender, Threat/Control-Override Delusions and Violence

This study brings together the threat/control-override perspective and the literature on gender and stress coping to argue that gender moderates the association between threat delusions and violence. We suggest that men are more likely than women to respond to stressors such as threat delusions with violence. We test these ideas using data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, a multi-wave study of post-discharge psychiatric patients. Within-person results from two-level hierarchical models support the idea that men and women cope with threat delusions differently. Specifically, we find that men are significantly more likely to engage in violence during periods when they experience threat delusions, compared with periods when they do not experience threat delusions. In contrast, women are significantly less likely to engage in violence during times when they experience threat delusions, compared with periods when they do not. We discuss these findings in light of the literature on gender and stress coping.     

“He's guilty!”: Investigator Bias in Judgments of Truth and Deception

Detecting deception is an inherently difficult task, but one that plays a critical role for law enforcement investigators in the interrogation room. In general, research has failed to indicate that performance in this domain is improved by training or prior experience. A signal detection framework is applied to the paradigm to better conceptualize the influence of these two factors. We found that although neither factor influenced discrimination accuracy, there was an effect on response bias such that training and prior experience appeared to increase the likelihood of responding deceit as opposed to truth. This investigator bias was observed both in a review of the literature and in this study of North American law enforcement investigators who took part in a forensically based deception-detection task. Possible theoretical mechanisms and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

洞开女性生命存在的悲剧真相--山东女性小说主题意向论析

20世纪90年代山东女性小说的主题意向集中于三个层面:一是描写刻画女性置身于物化时代的艰难处境;二是揭示反映女性沉浮于都市流行的浮华爱情中所遭受的残忍掠夺与伤害;三是书写传达女性解构颠覆男权中心文化秩序的决绝反抗。这些作品由此洞开了女性生命存在的悲剧真相,显示出文化反抗的积极意义,但同时也存在着明显的偏颇与不足。     

Blind Spots: The Effects of Information and Stakes on Fairness Bias and Dispersion

Mounting empirical research provides evidence of fairness bias and its economic and social effects, where fairness bias refers here to a deviation of claims from unbiased justice due to a personal stake. A far less appreciated issue is dispersion of fairness views and claims, which is also important for its effects on disagreements, empirical analysis, and philosophical theories. This study undertakes a systematic analysis of the effects on fairness bias and dispersion of two variables: stakes and information. Most philosophical and social science analyses related to justice and bias associate heightened bias with increased information and, conversely, impartiality with the elimination of certain information. Less attention has been paid to the opposing impact of information, which is to supply the facts needed to achieve justice more reliably. An important open question is whether, on balance, increased information helps agents to achieve fairer outcomes or whether biased use of such information contributes to less fair outcomes. This study focuses on a set of previously reported experiments that share certain features and subjects them to a new analysis. The results of this analysis suggest that, although information is often used in a self-serving way, increased information can, under certain conditions, contribute to fairness claims becoming less biased and less dispersed, both for stakeholders as well as impartial spectators.     

社会性别主流化:香港推动社会性别平等的经验及启示

社会性别主流化于1995年第四次世界妇女大会被联合国确定为促进社会性别平等的全球战略,要求各国将社会性别平等作为一项重要的政策指引,将社会性别观点纳入社会发展各领域的主流.成立于2001年的香港社会性别专责机构--妇女事务委员会一直致力于社会性别主流化的实施,特别是在政策范畴(制定、推行、实施)的参与和监督方面,有效地推动了香港地区的社会性别平等事业和社会的可持续发展.香港社会性别主流化的实践经验可为中国大陆社会性别主流化的建设和发展提供借鉴和参考.     

The Effects of Gender and Family,Friend, and Media Influences on Eating Behaviors and Body Image During Adolescence

The current study expands upon body image research to examine how gender, self-esteem, social support, teasing, and family, friend, and media pressures relate to body image and eating-related attitudes and behaviors among male and female adolescents (N = 177). Results indicated that adolescents were dissatisfied with their current bodies: males were concerned with increasing their upper body, whereas females wanted to decrease the overall size of their body. Low self-esteem and social support, weight-related teasing, and greater pressures to lose weight were associated with adolescents’ negative body esteem, body image, and eating attitudes. Females displayed more high risk eating behaviors—which were associated with more psychosocial risk factors—than males, whose high risk attitudes and behaviors were only associated with low parental support and greater pressure to be muscular. Reducing adolescents’ perceptions of appearance-related pressure from family and friends may be key for enhancing body image and decreasing links between low self-esteem and negative eating behaviors and weight-related perceptions. Rheanna N. Ata is currently a research assistant at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, Miriam Hospital/Brown University. She is interested in body image and eating disorders and completed this research during her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross. Alison Bryant Ludden is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on social relationships and problem behaviors during adolescence, with a special interest in school as a developmental context. She is an assistant professor of psychology at the College of the Holy Cross. Megan M. Lally is currently a graduate student in psychology at Pepperdine University. She completed this research during her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross.     

Does Hostile Attributional Bias for Relational Provocations Mediate the Short-Term Association between Relational Victimization and Aggression in Preadolescence?

This short-term longitudinal study examined the direct association between relational victimization and relational aggression over a five-month period, and proposed that hostile attributional bias for relational provocations mediated this association. Participants were 140 preadolescents (aged 9 to 11 years) in grades four and five. Relational victimization and relational aggression were assessed from self-reports. Hostile intent attributions were measured from preadolescent's responses to hypothetical provocation situations that depicted ambiguous relational aggression among peers. Concurrent and longitudinal findings revealed that more relationally victimized preadolescents were also more relationally aggressive toward their peers. Hostile attributions partially mediated the concurrent association between relational victimization and relational aggression at T1 only. Boys reported significantly higher levels of physical victimization, physical aggression, and relational aggression than girls. Implications for prevention programs are discussed. Rachel Yeung is a Doctoral student in Psychology at University of Victoria, Canada. She received her MSc in Life-Span Developmental Psychology at University of Victoria. Her research interests include risk and protective factors among children and adolescents who are victimized by their peers and program intervention. Dr. Bonnie Leadbeater, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychology who joined the University of Victoria in 1997 after 9 years as Faculty at Yale University. She is Director of the Centre for Youth and Society's research and programs that promote youth health and resilience through community-university research partnerships. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University, New York. Her research interests include depression in adolescence, resilience among high-risk youth, and the prevention of peer victimization.     

Groups and Deliberation

We present a group‐based approach to the study of deliberation. Deliberation occurs in groups, yet many studies of deliberation do not take the group as a unit of analysis. We argue that group composition and the attendant social dynamics to which they give rise are an important aspect of deliberation. We offer several examples of ways to study these effects, including the interaction of gender composition and the group's decision rule in the context of an experimental study of decisions about justice, the effect of racial composition in simulated juries, and the effect of ideological composition in local meetings. We examine the consequences of these factors on a variety of outcomes, including individuals' private opinion, individuals' behaviour, and group decisions. In conclusion we discuss the implications that group effects have for empirical and normative theories of deliberation.     

人外周血白细胞端粒DNA长度变化与性别的关系

目的 探讨人外周血白细胞端粒DNA长度变化与性别的关系。方法 选取123例不同年龄健康人外周血样本，其中男性63例，女性60例，酚氯仿法抽提人基因组DNA，采用地高辛标记探针，通过Southern Blot方法检测端粒DNA限制性酶切片段(TRF)长度的变化。结果 123例外周血白细胞端粒TRF平均长度随年龄增长而逐渐缩短，TRF随年龄缩短的速度是不均一的，且呈现出性别差异。结论 人外周血白细胞端粒DNA长度随年龄缩短的变化速率具有性别差异，通过端粒DNA长度推断个体年龄需考虑到性别因素。