Social Science posts
- January 11, 2011
- 03:40 PM
- 1,162 views
The Statistical Mechanics of Money
by Joseph Smidt in The Eternal Universe
Yesterday I listened to a talk by Victor Yakovenko of the University of Maryland about the physics of money and it was quite interesting. I think that after this talk I am finally beginning to understand economics while at the same time I suspect that most economists don't.
In his talk he said that back in 2000 he published a paper on how to apply statistical mechanics to free market economics.... Read more »
XI, N., DING, N., & WANG, Y. (2005) How required reserve ratio affects distribution and velocity of money☆. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 357(3-4), 543-555. DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2005.04.014
- January 11, 2011
- 12:20 PM
- 670 views
What Was Lost in the Fire: A Conservation Memorial
by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries
The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by Reconciliation Ecology:The modern conservation movement began at dawn on December 8, 1850, above the north fork of California's San Joaquin river. Soft orange light had just begun to spill over the craggy peaks of the eastern Ahwahnee mountains causing the jagged minarets to ignite like still burning embers from the Indian campfires below. All remained still inside the wigwams of the Ahwahneechee camp. But an attuned ear would have noticed that the early morning trills of the hermit thrush were strangely absent. A disturbed silence had entered the forest, broken only by the occasional clumsy snap of twigs as if from an animal unfamiliar with its surroundings. There was also the faint smell of smoke.Suddenly, fires roared to life throughout the camp as multiple wigwams were engulfed in flame. White men quickly scattered from the light and into shadow. A party of vigilantes in the company of Major John Savage had used smouldering logs from the Indians' own campfires to set the shelters ablaze. It was a tactic that those with experience in the Indian Wars knew to inspire panic and the crucial element of surprise. Dozens of Ahwahneechee fled their burning wigwams as the fire rapidly spread to the surrounding forest. Thick plumes of smoke were bathed in the same searing glow that was now descending from the rocky peaks above."Charge, boys! Charge!!" bellowed the gravelly voice of Lieutenant Chandler. A heavy drumbeat of foot falls now joined the sound of crackling pine. Thirty men, many wearing identical red shirts and crude suspenders purchased at the mining supply depot, dashed from the surrounding bushes with their rifles. Read the rest of the post here and stay tuned for the next entry in the Primate Diaries in Exile tour.Reference:Scholl AE, & Taylor AH (2010). Fire regimes, forest change, and self-organization in an old-growth mixed-conifer forest, Yosemite National Park, USA. Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America, 20 (2), 362-80 PMID: 20405793... Read more »
Scholl AE, & Taylor AH. (2010) Fire regimes, forest change, and self-organization in an old-growth mixed-conifer forest, Yosemite National Park, USA. Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America, 20(2), 362-80. PMID: 20405793
- January 11, 2011
- 12:20 PM
- 586 views
What Was Lost in the Fire: A Conservation Memorial
by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries in Exile
The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by Reconciliation Ecology:The modern conservation movement began at dawn on December 8, 1850, above the north fork of California's San Joaquin river. Soft orange light had just begun to spill over the craggy peaks of the eastern Ahwahnee mountains causing the jagged minarets to ignite like still burning embers from the Indian campfires below. All remained still inside the wigwams of the Ahwahneechee camp. But an attuned ear would have noticed that the early morning trills of the hermit thrush were strangely absent. A disturbed silence had entered the forest, broken only by the occasional clumsy snap of twigs as if from an animal unfamiliar with its surroundings. There was also the faint smell of smoke.Suddenly, fires roared to life throughout the camp as multiple wigwams were engulfed in flame. White men quickly scattered from the light and into shadow. A party of vigilantes in the company of Major John Savage had used smouldering logs from the Indians' own campfires to set the shelters ablaze. It was a tactic that those with experience in the Indian Wars knew to inspire panic and the crucial element of surprise. Dozens of Ahwahneechee fled their burning wigwams as the fire rapidly spread to the surrounding forest. Thick plumes of smoke were bathed in the same searing glow that was now descending from the rocky peaks above."Charge, boys! Charge!!" bellowed the gravelly voice of Lieutenant Chandler. A heavy drumbeat of foot falls now joined the sound of crackling pine. Thirty men, many wearing identical red shirts and crude suspenders purchased at the mining supply depot, dashed from the surrounding bushes with their rifles. Read the rest of the post here and stay tuned for the next entry in the Primate Diaries in Exile tour.Reference:Scholl AE, & Taylor AH (2010). Fire regimes, forest change, and self-organization in an old-growth mixed-conifer forest, Yosemite National Park, USA. Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America, 20 (2), 362-80 PMID: 20405793... Read more »
Scholl AE, & Taylor AH. (2010) Fire regimes, forest change, and self-organization in an old-growth mixed-conifer forest, Yosemite National Park, USA. Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America, 20(2), 362-80. PMID: 20405793
- January 11, 2011
- 08:00 AM
- 796 views
The Pedagogy of Obesity Reality Shows
by Arya M. Sharma in Dr. Sharma's Obesity Notes
One of the consequences of the obesity epidemic is the proliferation of “reality based” media aiming to lay bare and expose the unhealthy behaviours that lead to obesity and tout “solutions” primarily aimed at changing individual lifestyles.
Notable examples of this ‘”entertainment” genre include television programmes such as Jamie’s School Dinners and Jamie’s Ministry of Food, [...]... Read more »
Rich E. (2011) 'I see her being obesed!': Public pedagogy, reality media and the obesity crisis. Health (London, England : 1997), 15(1), 3-21. PMID: 21212111
- January 11, 2011
- 07:00 AM
- 903 views
What music do you listen to when you’re feeling sad?
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
They tell you when you’re feeling blue to put on a sad song. But, new research published in the International Journal of Arts and Technology suggests that the music we choose to listen to is guided more by familiarity than whether we are in a happy or sad mood and whether or not a particular [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkWhat music do you listen to when you’re feeling sad?
... Read more »
Jiyoun Kim. (2011) Affective states, familiarity and music selection: power of familiarity. Int. J. Arts and Technology, 4(1), 74-89. info:/
- January 11, 2011
- 02:00 AM
- 466 views
Introducing the ‘gay gene’: media and scientific representations
by SAGE Insight in SAGE Insight
From Public Understanding of Science There is an established link between genetics and male homosexuality, popularly dubbed the ‘gay gene’. This article examines the reporting of the ‘gay gene’ in the British press compared with scientific journals to illustrate the conflicts between science and the media, it attempts to suggest steps to improve the relationship [...]... Read more »
Miller, D. (1995) Introducing the ‘gay gene’: media and scientific representations. Public Understanding of Science, 4(3), 269-284. DOI: 10.1088/0963-6625/4/3/005
- January 10, 2011
- 12:40 PM
- 1,310 views
Count Your Plaintiffs Before Certification Hatches: Class Size Matters in Some Unexpected Ways
by Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm in Persuasive Litigator
By: Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm - When dealing with the number of plaintiffs in a class action, mass tort, or other large scale litigation, is "Super-Size Me" the plaintiff's best choice? At a legal level, the U.S. Supreme Court will get a chance to weigh in, after the decision last week to determine whether as many as 1.5 million female Wal-Mart workers claiming gender discrimination can be certified as a class (Dukes v. Wal-Mart). The common belief is that a large number of plaintiffs serves to maximize the degree of harm that a jury is likely to perceive and amplify the...... Read more »
Loran F. Nordgren and Mary-Hunter Morris McDonnell. (2010) The Scope-Severity Paradox: Why Doing More Harm Is Judged to be Less Harmful. Social Psychological and. info:/
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- January 10, 2011
- 11:02 AM
- 666 views
Care and equality in volunteer tourism: the perspective of locals
by Émilie Crossley in Journeys through the psychosocial
Advocates of volunteer tourism are keen to stress that the relationship between hosts and guests it engenders is one of responsibility, equality and reciprocity. It is a model of tourism that supposedly brings benefits to all parties involved, especially to host communities in developing countries, and which stands in firm opposition to the insensitive and [...]... Read more »
Sin, H.L. (2010) Who are we responsible to? Locals’ tales of volunteer tourism. Geoforum, 983-992. info:/
- January 10, 2011
- 08:15 AM
- 1,522 views
Delusions, odd and common: Living in the prodrome, part 2
by gregdowney in Neuroanthropology
Author Rachel Aviv talked at length with a number of young people who had been identified as being ‘prodromal’ for schizophrenia, experiencing periodic delusions and at risk of converting to full-blown schizophrenia, following some of the at-risk individuals for a year. In December’s Harper’s, Aviv offered a sensitive, insightful account of their day-to-day struggles to maintain insight, recognizing which of their experiences are not real: Which way madness lies: Can psychosis be prevented? (Freely accessible pdf available here.)
Psychiatric Research by Ted Watson
Aviv’s piece was really moving and inspired this post and an earlier one. The first part (Slipping into psychosis: living in the prodrome (part 1)) provides some sense of Aviv’s interviews, especially the story of ‘Anna,’ a woman who feared that she, like her mother before her, might be losing her grasp on reality. In addition, the earlier post covered the controversy surrounding the attempt to formalize a diagnosis in the DSM-V of ‘prodrome’ and the ethical problems created by trying to identify who is at risk of ‘going mad.’
This post is my more speculative offering, contemplating the relation of the content of delusions to the cultural context in which they occur. How do the specific details of delusions arise and how might the particularity of any one person’s delusions affect the way that a delusional individual is treated by others? Are you mad if everyone around you talks as if they, too, were experiencing the same delusions?
Aviv’s remarkable detailed account of prodrome, especially because it’s so strongly based in sensitive biographies of living on the boundary with schizophrenia, offers an opportunity to reflect on how the specific content of delusions — not simply the fact of having delusions — might provide the sufferer with different avenues to relate with others.
This piece, however, unlike the first, comes with a pretty serious caveat that this is not my area of expertise by any stretch. As I mentioned at the end of the other post, bloggers rush in where fools fear to tread. Moreover, as I try to finish off this piece, news from Tucscon about the shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is provoking a much more heated discussion of the role of society in shaping the thoughts of delusional individuals. I won’t be talking about Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect apprehended at the scene where six people were killed and almost twenty others injured, in this post, but I may have to write a third piece separate from the discussion of Aviv and the people she presents.
Daniel has already begun the discussion of the recent shooting in Jared Lee Loughner – Is Mental Illness the Explanation for What He Did? Daniel’s piece comments on an article in Slate by Dr. Vaughan Bell, the writer behind the excellent blog Mind Hacks. Bell’s Slate piece on Loughner and the attribution of mental illness to him is entitled Crazy Talk.
But I can’t help but think about prodromal delusion as Aviv’s article is so reminiscent of anthropological accounts, with sensitivity to the worldview of the subjects, in this case, individuals who are at the fraying edge of a shared reality with society around them. As an anthropologist, I can’t help but wonder how the prodromal-schizophrenic-recovery trajectory might be influenced by different contexts, so I’ll offer some thoughts with the caution that my experience with schizophrenic individuals is severely limited.
The cross-cultural variation in schizophrenia
In 1977, anthropologist Arthur Kleinman (1977: 9) influentially called for an injection of cultural sophistication into medicine, a recognition that some cross-cultural psychiatrists took that they needed to better understand the complicated relationship between ‘disease,’ the psychological and biological problems leading to disturbance, and ‘illness,’ ‘the personal, interpersonal, and cultural reaction to disease.’
This awareness that social worlds entered into the experience of disease helped bring together cross-cultural psychology and psychological anthropology and cleared the ground for the cross-cultural analysis of schizophrenia.
In the case of schizophrenia research, López and Guarnaccia (2000) point out that cross-cultural research has tended to focus on two issues: prognosis and family emotional structure.
First, early findings from global mental health surveys like the World Health Organization’s (1979) International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (IPSS) seemed to indicate that ‘schizophrenia in developing countries has a more favorable course than in developed countries’ (López and Guarnaccia 2000: 582).
Lin and Kleinman (1988: 555), for example, reviewed discussions by mental health practitioners and suggested that,
Concurrently, a number of psychiatrists with extensive clinical experiences in various parts of Asia and Africa have reported that the majority of psychotic patients they treated in these “Third World” countries tended to suffer from a disease process that was characterized by acute onset, fulminant but typically short clinical course, and, more often than not, complete remission…
Those who believe schizophrenic individuals are more likely to fully remit in developing countries point to a number of possible reasons (see for example Lin and Kleinman 1988: 561-563):
1) without clinical definitions of disorders, both sufferers and those around them are more likely to believe the condition is temporary whereas the expectation in industrialized societies is often that mental illness will be either chronic or even identity-defining;
2) industrialized societies demand greater individual autonomy and expose individuals to greater isolation and changing circumstances;
3) social roles exist for impaired individuals in developing economies that are not heavily stigmatized, especially in the workplace where individuals who have been institutionalized in industrialized communities can find it very difficult to reestablish employment;
4) smaller families and higher expectations on individuals in industrialized societies subjects mentally ill individuals to greater criticism and negative emotion; and
5) families are more invested in recovery of individual members who suffer psychotic symptoms and work actively to integrate the individual into social interaction. (Paraphrasing and summary with some elaboration of Lin and Kleinman, not a direct quote.)
The idea that an individual was more likely to recover from schizophrenia if living in the developing world than in a wealthy, industrialized country is widespread in the area of public mental health, although some critics think that the prognosis is not so positive among the poor (see Cohen et al. 2007; see also Lin and Kleinman 1988 for a discussion of methodological complications).
In fact, even if the pattern found in the WHO study holds, the contrast between industrialized and developing economies is overly broad, as there are exceptions in both cases — for example, developing economies where mental illness is heavily stigmatized and industrialized countries with greater optimism about recovery (Cohen et al. 2007).
Cohen and colleagues’ (2007) review significantly complicates the picture for understanding global schizophrenia across cultures and economic status. If this post were really to consider the global epidemiology of schizophrenia, Cohen et al.’s review would be central to asking some penetrating questions about the forces that affect the emergence and prognosis for schizophrenic individuals around the world. But that’s a different post…
The second area of concentration in cross-cultural research is that a number of researchers have explored whether emotional expression and interaction patterns in the family increase the chances of a relapse when schizophrenic patients return home. This research explores whether inter-ethnic differences in households may affect patient susceptibility to relapse (see Weisman 1997).
I’ll come back to this point in a bit, but the basic discussion revolves around the observation that the small nuclear family residence structure in many industrialized countries can place extraordinary burdens on immediate family members to care for schizophrenic kin. The resulting friction, especially combined with an individualized, medicalized understanding of the origins of schizophrenia, can produce resentment, criticism, fa... Read more »
Bauer, S., Schanda, H., Karakula, H., Olajossy-Hilkesberger, L., Rudaleviciene, P., Okribelashvili, N., Chaudhry, H., Idemudia, S., Gscheider, S., & Ritter, K. (2010) Culture and the prevalence of hallucinations in schizophrenia. Comprehensive Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1016/j.comppsych.2010.06.008
Cohen, A., Patel, V., Thara, R., & Gureje, O. (2007) Questioning an Axiom: Better Prognosis for Schizophrenia in the Developing World?. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 34(2), 229-244. DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbm105
Corcoran, C., Davidson, L., Sills-Shahar, R., Nickou, C., Malaspina, D., Miller, T., & McGlashan, T. (2003) A Qualitative Research Study of the Evolution of Symptoms in Individuals Identified as Prodromal to Psychosis. Psychiatric Quarterly, 74(4), 313-332. DOI: 10.1023/A:1026083309607
Gearing, R., Alonzo, D., Smolak, A., McHugh, K., Harmon, S., & Baldwin, S. (2010) Association of religion with delusions and hallucinations in the context of schizophrenia: Implications for engagement and adherence. Schizophrenia Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2010.11.005
Huang, C., Shang, C., Shieh, M., Lin, H., & Su, J. (2010) The interactions between religion, religiosity, religious delusion/hallucination, and treatment-seeking behavior among schizophrenic patients in Taiwan. Psychiatry Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2010.07.014
Koenig HG. (2009) Research on religion, spirituality, and mental health: a review. Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie, 54(5), 283-91. PMID: 19497160
Lin KM, & Kleinman AM. (1988) Psychopathology and clinical course of schizophrenia: a cross-cultural perspective. Schizophrenia bulletin, 14(4), 555-67. PMID: 3064282
López SR, & Guarnaccia PJ. (2000) Cultural psychopathology: uncovering the social world of mental illness. Annual review of psychology, 571-98. PMID: 10751981
Roth, T., Lubin, F., Sodhi, M., & Kleinman, J. (2009) Epigenetic mechanisms in schizophrenia. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - General Subjects, 1790(9), 869-877. DOI: 10.1016/j.bbagen.2009.06.009
Saha, S., Chant, D., Welham, J., & McGrath, J. (2005) A Systematic Review of the Prevalence of Schizophrenia. PLoS Medicine, 2(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020141
Saravanan, B., Jacob, K., Johnson, S., Prince, M., Bhugra, D., & David, A. (2010) Outcome of first-episode schizophrenia in India: longitudinal study of effect of insight and psychopathology. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 196(6), 454-459. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.109.068577
Weisman, A. (1997) Understanding Cross-Cultural Prognostic Variability for Schizophrenia. Cultural Diversity , 3(1), 23-35. DOI: 10.1037//1099-9809.3.1.23
- January 10, 2011
- 08:15 AM
- 1,228 views
Delusions, odd and common: Living in the prodrome, part 2
by Daniel Lende in Neuroanthropology PLoS
Author Rachel Aviv talked at length with a number of young people who had been identified as being ‘prodromal’ for schizophrenia, experiencing periodic delusions and at risk of converting to full-blown schizophrenia, following some of the at-risk individuals for a year. In December’s Harper’s, Aviv offered a sensitive, insightful account of their day-to-day struggles to maintain insight, recognizing which of their experiences are not real: Which way madness lies: Can psychosis be prevented? (Freely accessible pdf available here.)
Psychiatric Research by Ted Watson
Aviv’s piece was really moving and inspired this post and an earlier one. The first part (Slipping into psychosis: living in the prodrome (part 1)) provides some sense of Aviv’s interviews, especially the story of ‘Anna,’ a woman who feared that she, like her mother before her, might be losing her grasp on reality. In addition, the earlier post covered the controversy surrounding the attempt to formalize a diagnosis in the DSM-V of ‘prodrome’ and the ethical problems created by trying to identify who is at risk of ‘going mad.’
This post is my more speculative offering, contemplating the relation of the content of delusions to the cultural context in which they occur. How do the specific details of delusions arise and how might the particularity of any one person’s delusions affect the way that a delusional individual is treated by others? Are you mad if everyone around you talks as if they, too, were experiencing the same delusions?
Aviv’s remarkable detailed account of prodrome, especially because it’s so strongly based in sensitive biographies of living on the boundary with schizophrenia, offers an opportunity to reflect on how the specific content of delusions — not simply the fact of having delusions — might provide the sufferer with different avenues to relate with others.
This piece, however, unlike the first, comes with a pretty serious caveat that this is not my area of expertise by any stretch. As I mentioned at the end of the other post, bloggers rush in where fools fear to tread. Moreover, as I try to finish off this piece, news from Tucscon about the shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is provoking a much more heated discussion of the role of society in shaping the thoughts of delusional individuals. I won’t be talking about Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect apprehended at the scene where six people were killed and almost twenty others injured, in this post, but I may have to write a third piece separate from the discussion of Aviv and the people she presents.
Daniel has already begun the discussion of the recent shooting in Jared Lee Loughner – Is Mental Illness the Explanation for What He Did? Daniel’s piece comments on an article in Slate by Dr. Vaughan Bell, the writer behind the excellent blog Mind Hacks. Bell’s Slate piece on Loughner and the attribution of mental illness to him is entitled Crazy Talk.
But I can’t help but think about prodromal delusion as Aviv’s article is so reminiscent of anthropological accounts, with sensitivity to the worldview of the subjects, in this case, individuals who are at the fraying edge of a shared reality with society around them. As an anthropologist, I can’t help but wonder how the prodromal-schizophrenic-recovery trajectory might be influenced by different contexts, so I’ll offer some thoughts with the caution that my experience with schizophrenic individuals is severely limited.
The cross-cultural variation in schizophrenia
In 1977, anthropologist Arthur Kleinman (1977: 9) influentially called for an injection of cultural sophistication into medicine, a recognition that some cross-cultural psychiatrists took that they needed to better understand the complicated relationship between ‘disease,’ the psychological and biological problems leading to disturbance, and ‘illness,’ ‘the personal, interpersonal, and cultural reaction to disease.’
This awareness that social worlds entered into the experience of disease helped bring together cross-cultural psychology and psychological anthropology and cleared the ground for the cross-cultural analysis of schizophrenia.
In the case of schizophrenia research, López and Guarnaccia (2000) point out that cross-cultural research has tended to focus on two issues: prognosis and family emotional structure.
First, early findings from global mental health surveys like the World Health Organization’s (1979) International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (IPSS) seemed to indicate that ‘schizophrenia in developing countries has a more favorable course than in developed countries’ (López and Guarnaccia 2000: 582).
Lin and Kleinman (1988: 555), for example, reviewed discussions by mental health practitioners and suggested that,
Concurrently, a number of psychiatrists with extensive clinical experiences in various parts of Asia and Africa have reported that the majority of psychotic patients they treated in these “Third World” countries tended to suffer from a disease process that was characterized by acute onset, fulminant but typically short clinical course, and, more often than not, complete remission…
Those who believe schizophrenic individuals are more likely to fully remit in developing countries point to a number of possible reasons (see for example Lin and Kleinman 1988: 561-563):
1) without clinical definitions of disorders, both sufferers and those around them are more likely to believe the condition is temporary whereas the expectation in industrialized societies is often that mental illness will be either chronic or even identity-defining;
2) industrialized societies demand greater individual autonomy and expose individuals to greater isolation and changing circumstances;
3) social roles exist for impaired individuals in developing economies that are not heavily stigmatized, especially in the workplace where individuals who have been institutionalized in industrialized communities can find it very difficult to reestablish employment;
4) smaller families and higher expectations on individuals in industrialized societies subjects mentally ill individuals to greater criticism and negative emotion; and
5) families are more invested in recovery of individual members who suffer psychotic symptoms and work actively to integrate the individual into social interaction. (Paraphrasing and summary with some elaboration of Lin and Kleinman, not a direct quote.)
The idea that an individual was more likely to recover from schizophrenia if living in the developing world than in a wealthy, industrialized country is widespread in the area of public mental health, although some critics think that the prognosis is not so positive among the poor (see Cohen et al. 2007; see also Lin and Kleinman 1988 for a discussion of methodological complications).
In fact, even if the pattern found in the WHO study holds, the contrast between industrialized and developing economies is overly broad, as there are exceptions in both cases — for example, developing economies where mental illness is heavily stigmatized and industrialized countries with greater optimism about recovery (Cohen et al. 2007).
Cohen and colleagues’ (2007) review significantly complicates the picture for understanding global schizophrenia across cultures and economic status. If this post were really to consider the global epidemiology of schizophrenia, Cohen et al.’s review would be central to asking some penetrating questions about the forces that affect the emergence and prognosis for schizophrenic individuals around the world. But that’s a different post…
The second area of concentration in cross-cultural research is that a number of researchers have explored whether emotional expression and interaction patterns in the family increase the chances of a relapse when schizophrenic patients return home. This research explores whether inter-ethnic differences in households may affect patient susceptibility to relapse (see Weisman 1997).
I’ll come back to this point in a bit, but the basic discussion revolves around the observation that the small nuclear family residence structure in many industrialized countries can place extraordinary burdens on immediate family members to care for schizophrenic kin. The resulting friction, especially combined with an individualized, medicalized understanding of the origins of schizophrenia, can produce resentment, criticism, fa... Read more »
Bauer, S., Schanda, H., Karakula, H., Olajossy-Hilkesberger, L., Rudaleviciene, P., Okribelashvili, N., Chaudhry, H., Idemudia, S., Gscheider, S., & Ritter, K. (2010) Culture and the prevalence of hallucinations in schizophrenia. Comprehensive Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1016/j.comppsych.2010.06.008
Cohen, A., Patel, V., Thara, R., & Gureje, O. (2007) Questioning an Axiom: Better Prognosis for Schizophrenia in the Developing World?. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 34(2), 229-244. DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbm105
Corcoran, C., Davidson, L., Sills-Shahar, R., Nickou, C., Malaspina, D., Miller, T., & McGlashan, T. (2003) A Qualitative Research Study of the Evolution of Symptoms in Individuals Identified as Prodromal to Psychosis. Psychiatric Quarterly, 74(4), 313-332. DOI: 10.1023/A:1026083309607
Gearing, R., Alonzo, D., Smolak, A., McHugh, K., Harmon, S., & Baldwin, S. (2010) Association of religion with delusions and hallucinations in the context of schizophrenia: Implications for engagement and adherence. Schizophrenia Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2010.11.005
Huang, C., Shang, C., Shieh, M., Lin, H., & Su, J. (2010) The interactions between religion, religiosity, religious delusion/hallucination, and treatment-seeking behavior among schizophrenic patients in Taiwan. Psychiatry Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2010.07.014
Koenig HG. (2009) Research on religion, spirituality, and mental health: a review. Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie, 54(5), 283-91. PMID: 19497160
Lin KM, & Kleinman AM. (1988) Psychopathology and clinical course of schizophrenia: a cross-cultural perspective. Schizophrenia bulletin, 14(4), 555-67. PMID: 3064282
López SR, & Guarnaccia PJ. (2000) Cultural psychopathology: uncovering the social world of mental illness. Annual review of psychology, 571-98. PMID: 10751981
Roth, T., Lubin, F., Sodhi, M., & Kleinman, J. (2009) Epigenetic mechanisms in schizophrenia. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - General Subjects, 1790(9), 869-877. DOI: 10.1016/j.bbagen.2009.06.009
Saha, S., Chant, D., Welham, J., & McGrath, J. (2005) A Systematic Review of the Prevalence of Schizophrenia. PLoS Medicine, 2(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020141
Saravanan, B., Jacob, K., Johnson, S., Prince, M., Bhugra, D., & David, A. (2010) Outcome of first-episode schizophrenia in India: longitudinal study of effect of insight and psychopathology. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 196(6), 454-459. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.109.068577
Weisman, A. (1997) Understanding Cross-Cultural Prognostic Variability for Schizophrenia. Cultural Diversity , 3(1), 23-35. DOI: 10.1037//1099-9809.3.1.23
- January 10, 2011
- 07:47 AM
- 845 views
The speed of cities
by Jason Collins in Evolving Economics
Over the weekend, I listened to a great Radiolab podcast in which Bob Levine was interviewed about the pace of walking in cities. Bob spoke about how people tend to walk faster in larger cities, with this relationship surprisingly consistent. Where does this walking pace comes from. As the host Jad asked, do we make [...]... Read more »
Bornstein, M., & Bornstein, H. (1976) The pace of life. Nature, 259(5544), 557-559. DOI: 10.1038/259557a0
- January 10, 2011
- 07:03 AM
- 715 views
News flash: Lawyers Under Stress are Critical, Cautious & Distant
by Doug Keene in The Jury Room
And who isn’t? It isn’t really news that stress can bring out the “dark side” in each of us—but it is the topic of recent research. (Find the complete report on which this write-up is based here.) You have likely often seen the write-ups about “personality characteristics” of those in various professions. And it is often a [...]
No related posts.... Read more »
Daicoff, S. (1997) Lawyer, Know Thyself: A Review of Empirical Research on Attorney Attributes Bearing on Professionalism. American University Law Review, 1337. info:/
- January 8, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 732 views
Trends and drivers for cross-border supply chains
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
What are the main change and trend drivers for international supply chains? How will future cross-border supply chains look like? This article identifies a set of foreseeable drivers of change and their predicted impact on global supply chain management for the next 20 years. ... Read more »
Hameri, A., & Hintsa, J. (2009) Assessing the drivers of change for cross-border supply chains. International Journal of Physical Distribution , 39(9), 741-761. DOI: 10.1108/09600030911008184
- January 7, 2011
- 03:58 PM
- 862 views
Americans: not as religious as they think they are
We're used to hearing that America is an exceptional nation when it comes to religion. Certainly, the hold that religion has over public life is unparalleled among wealthy nations, and most Americans readily tell pollsters that they are dutifully religious.
But it seems that American religiosity might also be exceptional for quite another reason. It turns out that the gap between what they tell pollsters and what they actually do is bigger than for any other nation.
We've known for a long time that, when asked, people report going to Church more than they actually do. That's not too surprising. It's well known that, when you ask questions that relate to personal esteem, people will tend to tell you what they wish was true, rather than what actually is true.
They tell you what they want to believe.
Philip Brenner, at the University of Michigan, set out to see if this gap, between reports and reality, was the same in all countries. He used data from a variety of surveys, and compared it to so-called "time use" studies. These studies ask participants to write down each day what they have been doing.
He found that Americans say they go to Church about twice as often as they actually do. That's pretty similar to what has been found in other studies.
In other countries, however, they gap was much smaller - in fact, for many of them, it was non-existent (the bar chart only shows the worst offenders). It's not a recent phenomenon either. Brenner plots graphs for each of the 14 countries he studied. The graph for the USA shows a pretty consistent gap for the past 40 years (click on the graph for a larger version).
Compare that with the Netherlands, where Church attendance has gradually declined, with polling surveys and time-use reports pretty much matched all the way.
Broadly speaking, there were three kinds of countries. Those where Church attendance is steadily falling (Netherlands, West Germany, France Slovenia, Spain, Austria, Ireland), those where Church Attendance has always been low (East Germany, Norway, Finland, Britain), and one (Italy) with a more complex picture.
But only the USA and Canada showed a marked gap between reported Church attendance and reality. Why should that be? According to Brenner:
When you ask people if they attended church, they hear that question pragmatically. They reflect on their identity as a religious person and they want to honestly report their identity as a religious person. So I think they are being honest with how they understand the question: ‘Are you the sort of person who attends religious services?’ is what they think they hear and they say yes.
So could it really be that could be that religion is an important part of identity in these countries but not in Europe? Possibly, but I don't really think that's the case in Canada. Certainly not when compared to Ireland and Italy!
So there must be something else in North American culture that prompts people to say they are more dutifully religious than they really are. It beats me what that could be - but, perhaps, whatever it is is the same factor that make religion so resilient in those countries?
Brenner, Philip S. (2011). Exceptional behavior or exceptional identity? Overreporting of church attendance in the US Public Opinion Quarterly: In press
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
... Read more »
Brenner, Philip S. (2011) Exceptional behavior or exceptional identity? Overreporting of church attendance in the US. Public Opinion Quarterly. info:/
- January 7, 2011
- 01:39 PM
- 578 views
REDD and Financial Resilience for Conservation
This month's Conservation Letters has a Policy Perspective on the risks of relying REDD+ funding for conservation projects. REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, with the "+" standing for biodiversity and social benefits), is a mechanism for transferring funds to developing countries for forest preservation and restoration. REDD+ financing is eventually supposed to flow primarily from the private sector, and it is one of the few parts of an international climate agreement that has been uncontentious in negotiations.
REDD+ presents a potentially huge new pool of funds for biodiversity conservation, but the authors caution that it comes with a set of risks:
Political risk: While some REDD+ financing is already beginning to flow, the bulk of the funds are reliant on a future compliance regime regime that will incentivize companies to finance REDD+ in lieu of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Given the slow progress of efforts to put such laws in place, in the near REDD+ funds are more akin to international aid, which the authors note is "notoriously volatile."
Competition risk: REDD+ is primarily a tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity conservation is a co-benefit. The authors describe this a problem of "mismatched time scales," but its really a matter of substitutability and competition. As low-carbon technologies become cheaper, they may become cheaper substitutes for forest carbon sequestration, lowering demand for REDD+.
The authors point to a number of strategies to reduce these risks, including diversification of funding sources, including both traditional donor financing and other payments for ecosystem services, and the development of insurance mechanisms. They also promote the use of conservation trust funds to pool REDD+ capital and distribute the interest - a conservative but stabilizing strategy.
There are a number of other risks associated with tying conservation funding with a nascent commodity market, and the authors urge conservationists to look to the private sector, which has been hesitant to invest in REDD+, and exercise similar cautions.
I think it would be an interesting exercise for conservation organizations to look at this list of investment risks produced by forest investors in order to understand what drives this hesitancy. If a conservation project can address these comprehensively, it's a lot more likely to be able to secure consistent funding.
Phelps, J., Webb, E., & Koh, L. (2010). Risky business: an uncertain future for biodiversity conservation finance through REDD+ Conservation Letters DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2010.00155.x... Read more »
Phelps, J., Webb, E., & Koh, L. (2010) Risky business: an uncertain future for biodiversity conservation finance through REDD . Conservation Letters. DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2010.00155.x
- January 7, 2011
- 10:50 AM
- 636 views
Guest post: sex-differential use of the same objects versus sex-differences in object preference
by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation
This is a response to the Kaylenberg and Wrangham 2010 paper on stick-carrying chimpanzees.... Read more »
Alexander, G., & Hines, M. (2002) Sex differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus). Evolution and Human Behavior, 23(6), 467-479. DOI: 10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00107-1
Hassett, J., Siebert, E., & Wallen, K. (2008) Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children. Hormones and Behavior, 54(3), 359-364. DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2008.03.008
Kahlenberg SM, & Wrangham RW. (2010) Sex differences in chimpanzees' use of sticks as play objects resemble those of children. Current biology : CB, 20(24). PMID: 21172622
- January 7, 2011
- 10:43 AM
- 591 views
The heat is on – Climategate as a peek into scientific controversies
by Henrik Karlstrøm in STS Guru
Remember the previous -gate? Not the current one with the leaking cables, but the other one with the climate scientists who got their internal communication leaked to the internet, sparking fierce debate on the possible ideological bias of climate research? That’s right: it’s time to come back to Climategate. Two of my colleagues here at the institute, Tomas Moe Skjølsvold and Marianne Ryghaug, have gone through the e-mails that were leaked and looked at what it says about the way a community of researchers relates to the outside world. How do they prepare for criticism, and how do they resolve disputes over methodology?... Read more »
Ryghaug, M., & Skjølsvold, T. (2010) The Global Warming of Climate Science: Climategate and the Construction of Scientific Facts. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 24(3), 287-307. DOI: 10.1080/02698595.2010.522411
- January 7, 2011
- 07:02 AM
- 926 views
Simple Jury Persuasion: On caffeine and speed
by Rita Handrich in The Jury Room
We’re reacting to two different PsyBlog posts at once because their posts have striking relevance to litigation strategy. As they continue their series on top forms of persuasion—they touch on caffeine and speech rate. So. Let’s take a look at how these strategies apply to litigation advocacy, because (as we’ve seen with some advertising principles [...]
Related posts:Simple Jury Persuasion: Don’t confuse argument with persuasion
Simple Jury Persuasion: The tactics of effective salespeople
Simple Jury Persuasion: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV”
... Read more »
Martin, P., Laing, J., Martin, R., & Mitchell, M. (2005) Caffeine, Cognition, and Persuasion: Evidence for Caffeine Increasing the Systematic Processing of Persuasive Messages. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35(1), 160-182. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2005.tb02098.x
Smith, S., & Shaffer, D. (1991) Celerity and Cajolery: Rapid Speech May Promote or Inhibit Persuasion through its Impact on Message Elaboration. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(6), 663-669. DOI: 10.1177/0146167291176009
- January 7, 2011
- 02:06 AM
- 558 views
Birth Order Influences the Formation of Long-Term Relationships
by Psychothalamus in Psychothalamus
134 years since Francis Galton opened the birth order effects debate by observing that first-born sons and only sons were over-represented among English scientists, controversy has shrouded the issue such that we haven't quite gotten past whether birth order effects exist or not, let alone properly consider what they are or how they work.Some scholars assert that the lack of conclusive evidence is due to methodological biases that may allow the researcher to find the result that he or she is looking for. So, in that sense, a researcher who seeks to confirm that the birth order effect exists may find it just as well as a researcher who seeks to disconfirm it might.In Birth Order Effects in the Formation of Long-Term Relationships, Hartshorne, Salem-Hartshorne and Hartshorne seek to probe the birth effect in a manner that is as methodologically neutral as possible by simply determining if there are any correlations between the sharing of birth order and the likelihood of long-term relationship formation. Their results provide new research material that weighs in favour of the presence of birth order effects, though what drives this effect is still speculative.By drawing on a sample of 900 US undergraduate students, the researchers found that people are more likely to form and be in long-term relationships, both friendly and romantic, if they share the same birth order than would be expected by chance. For instance, if I were a first-born child, the likelihood of me being close friends with another first-born child is higher than the likelihood of me being close friends with another second- or third-born child. This tendency was also found for romantic partners.A second and similar web-based study was conducted which gathered responses from American participants (1,911) as well as participants from other parts of the world (713). Similar results were garnered. There was no significant difference detected between American and non-American respondents, suggesting that birth order effects on long-term relationships are not culturally variant.The researchers also controlled for socioeconomic status and size of family, which is a progressive extension from other earlier studies. This eliminates the confounds of number of siblings one has and the socioeconomic class one belongs to, which can potentially influence one's development because it is a commonly known social phenomenon that wealthier and upper class families tend to have less offspring.The authors surmise that birth order underlies personality traits and having the same birth order results in greater compatibility between personality types, leading to the formation of closer bonds in both friendships and romantic relationships.Joshua K. Hartshorne, Nancy Salem-Hartshorne, and Timothy S. Hartshorne (2009). Birth Order Effects in the Formation of Long-Term Relationship Journal of Individual Psychology, 65 (2)... Read more »
Joshua K. Hartshorne, Nancy Salem-Hartshorne, and Timothy S. Hartshorne. (2009) Birth Order Effects in the Formation of Long-Term Relationship. Journal of Individual Psychology, 65(2). info:/
- January 6, 2011
- 02:00 AM
- 241 views
Branding in a new light: conveying identities through altered lighting
by SAGE Insight in SAGE Insight
Light and corporate identity: Using lighting for corporate communication From Lighting Research and Technology This study explores how lighting design can alter the perceived brand identity of a room. Today’s shop lighting doesn’t just need to show off the goods in their best light, but also convey the brand image strategically in a chain of [...]... Read more »
Schielke, T. (2010) Light and corporate identity: Using lighting for corporate communication. Lighting Research and Technology, 42(3), 285-295. DOI: 10.1177/1477153510369526
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