NEWS SCIENCE

According to an Oxford economist, marriage and cohabiting rates in developed countries can be linked to attitudes towards the roles of men and women, and views on who is responsible for doing the housework and looking after the children. Both men and women have shown they are more likely to want a live-in relationship with the opposite sex if they think their partner will do a share of the housework and childcare duties.

An Oxford study suggests that if you want to settle down, your chances of getting married or living with someone are probably highest in Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries and the United States. According to the study, men in those countries are more likely than their Australian counterparts to do the household chores and thereby make marriage a more attractive option to their nation's women.

The study constructs an 'egalitarian index' of 12 developed countries, based on responses to questionnaires about gender, housework and childcare responsibilities. Norway and Sweden top the egalitarian index, with Great Britain in third place, followed by the United States. At the bottom of the index are Japan, Germany, and Austria, with Australia languishing as the least egalitarian. Data about the number of women in partnerships was then compared against the index. Women of similar age and educational background were compared across the participating countries to see if their country's rating on the egalitarian index bore any relation to whether they were living with a man or not. Other controlling factors, such as the female unemployment, were taken account of.

The study found that women living in less egalitarian countries were between 20 and 50 per cent less likely to be living with a man than comparable women living in a more egalitarian country. For instance, the findings would predict that the average British woman was 8.5 percentage points more likely than a similar Australian woman to be in a live-in relationship.*

Study author Dr Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, an ESRC-funded researcher at the Centre for Time Use Research at Oxford University, concludes that women living in countries with the highest proportion of egalitarian men are more likely to marry or live with a man. The study also suggests that a more egalitarian woman in any country is less likely than a less egalitarian woman to set up home with a man because, everything else being equal, most men would choose a woman who they can rely on to do housework and look after the children. While egalitarian men seem to be viewed as a better bet by women, egalitarian women are seen as a less safe bet by men.

Dr Sevilla-Sanz said: 'In egalitarian countries you might, in principle, expect to see women preferring to remain single rather than face the prospect of spending more time doing household chores. However, this study shows that in egalitarian countries there is less social stigma attached to men doing what was traditionally women's work. For instance, if paternity leave is the social norm, more men take it. This leads to men in egalitarian societies taking on more of a domestic role so the likelihood of forming a harmonious household becomes greater, resulting in a higher proportion of couples setting up households in these countries. 'If developed countries want to look at why the birth rate in their country is falling, we need to focus on the drivers for whether couples decide to live together and start a family. It seems to show what couples ask 'Will I be better off?'. Women in less egalitarian countries are saying 'No'. Countries with a low birth rate face the challenge of a shrinking workforce in coming decades with questions about who will pay for public services and social support.

Sample size for index: The representative sample of 13,500 men and women, aged between 20-45 years old from each of the 12 countries, was taken from the same survey carried out in 1994 and 2002 as part of the International Social Survey Program. (ISSP is a program of cross-national collaboration on surveys between several social science institutes.)

Calculation explained: According to the egalitarian index, British women face a more egalitarian society than Australian women. The egalitarian index in Great Britain is 0.08, compared to - 0.16 in Australia, which results in Britain being a more egalitarian society by 0.24. Given the author's estimate that a higher egalitarian index increases the likelihood of a woman to live with a man between 20 and 50 percent, this yields a difference in the likelihood that a British woman lives with a man of 8.5 percentage points higher than her Australian counterpart, ie. 50% X 0.24+20%X 0.24=8.4 percentage points, or 0.08 per cent. The country with the highest egalitarian index is Sweden with a value of the index of 0.43.

The countries in the egalitarian index (in descending order) are: Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, United States, Northern Ireland, Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Austria and Australia.


http://www.ox.ac.uk/

Nothing could be easier than walking out the door, right? According to a new University of Illinois journal article, an abused woman actually goes through a five-step process of leaving that can be complicated at every stage by boundary ambiguity.

"When a woman is disengaging from a relationship, she is often unclear about her family's boundaries. Is her partner in or out of her life? A woman's spouse may be physically in the home but psychologically unavailable. He's not caring for the kids or being a loving partner.

"Or she may have physically left him but still be psychologically connected. She misses him, and for the sake of her children, she'd like for her family to be together again," said Jennifer Hardesty, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development.

"We could see this struggle clearly in the pictures women drew of their families at different points in the process of leaving. It's a confusing time. The boundaries are ambiguous,"" she said.

"It's not unlike the experience of having a child leave for college," she noted. "Your child isn't living at home, but you're still very connected to them emotionally. Yet, when they come home for visits, they may pay little attention to you while they make the rounds of their friends. It's always hard to figure out what the new boundaries are as you move into a new stage of life."

The article describes doctoral candidate Lyndal Khaw's dissertation work, unique in integrating boundary ambiguity into Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change model. Khaw has applied the model to 25 abused women from varied backgrounds, identifying boundary ambiguity within the five stages of the process of leaving.

"In the first two stages, women begin to disconnect emotionally from their relationships. You hear them say things like, I started not to care for him anymore," Khaw said

Stage 3 is often marked by a pileup of abusive episodes and noticeable effects of the violence on their children. "Women make preparations to leave, such as finding a place to stay or secretly saving up money. This stage is important for women as they switch from thinking about leaving to actually doing something about it," she said.

"Then, at Stage 4, when women take action, we see a lot of what we call back and forthing because when women leave, the emotions often come back. They need clarity. They want to be physically and emotionally connected again," said Hardesty.

The last stage, maintenance, is achieved when women have been gone for six months or more. "But even then they may have boundary ambiguity if their ex-spouse won't let them go. With continued contact through court-ordered child visitation, the potential for ongoing abuse remains as well as continued confusion over the abuser's role in the woman's life," she said.

In the past, Khaw and Hardesty have used the model to focus on what individual women are going through. But applying boundary ambiguity to the model gives a more complete picture of the process.

"Leaving a relationship is much more complex than just deciding to change, and it involves more than a woman's prioritizing her safety. Other actors are involved. The abuser makes decisions that affect a woman's movement through the stages. And children can be a powerful influence in motivating a woman to get out of a relationship and in pulling her back in," Hardesty said.

It's important for social work professionals and frustrated family and friends to understand the process of leaving, Hardesty said.

"Often shelter workers focus on safety and tangible needs such as a job and housing. They don't help women disentangle themselves emotionally. But it's hard for women to get out of the situation if they haven't resolved these relationship issues.

"Discouraged friends and family members have to learn to view leaving as a process and realize that there's little they can say to speed it along. It's important for them to reinforce the risks the woman is facing by asking such questions as 'Has he become more abusive? Does he have a gun?'

"When talking to an abused friend or family member, you should always emphasize safety, but for your own sanity, you should realize that leaving is a process and she has to work her way through it herself," she said.

When women do finally achieve both physical and emotional separation, research shows that they experience fewer health problems and less depression, Hardesty said.


http://illinois.edu/

New research shows babies have a handle on the meaning of different dog barks – despite little or no previous exposure to dogs.

Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language.

The new findings come on the heels of a study from the same Brigham Young University lab showing that infants can detect mood swings in Beethoven’s music.

Though the mix of dogs and babies sounds silly, experiments of this kind help us understand how babies learn so rapidly. Long before they master speech, babies recognize and respond to the tone of what’s going on around them.

“Emotion is one of the first things babies pick up on in their social world,” said BYU psychology professor Ross Flom, lead author of the study.

Flom and two BYU students report their latest “amazing baby” findings in the journal Developmental Psychology.

“We chose dogs because they are highly communicative creatures both in their posture and the nature of their bark,” Flom said.

In the experiment, the babies first saw two different pictures of the same dog, one in an aggressive posture and the other in a friendly stance. Then the researchers played – in random order – sound clips of a friendly and an aggressive dog bark.

“They only had one trial because we didn’t want them to learn it on the fly and figure it out,” Flom said.

While the recordings played, the 6-month-old babies spent most of their time staring at the appropriate picture. Older babies usually made the connection instantly with their very first glance.

Study co-authors Dan Hyde and Heather Whipple Stephenson conducted the experiments as undergrads and don’t recall any babies getting upset.

“Many of them enjoyed it,” said Hyde. “Others just looked.”

“Infants are pretty cooperative subjects,” Stephenson added.

The mentored research experience helped Hyde and Stephenson secure spots at prestigious grad schools. Hyde is currently at Harvard working toward a Ph.D. in developmental psychology. Fellow co-author Heather Whipple Stephenson recently completed a master’s degree in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota.

“With this study, my favorite part was watching a somewhat zany idea grow into a legitimate research project,” Stephenson said.

While our relationships with children and best friends tend to become less negative as we age, we’re more likely to see our spouses as irritating and demanding.


That’s according to a University of Michigan study that analyzed long-term patterns of relationship negativity among more than 800 adults ages 20 and older.

“There’s been a lot of research showing that marriage and other close relationships enhance well-being,” said Kira Birditt, a research fellow at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “But less work has focused on the negative aspects of close relationships."

Viewing our spouses more negatively over time may not be all bad, Birditt says. In fact, it might even be, well, positive. “As we age, and become closer and more comfortable with one another, it could be that we’re more able to express ourselves to each other. In other words, it’s possible that negativity is a normal aspect of close relationships that include a great deal of daily contact.”

For the analysis, presented late last year at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Birditt and colleagues Lisa Jackey and Toni Antonucci looked at individual changes over time and also at differences among people at different stages in life— young, middle-aged and older adults. Participants in the study were interviewed first in 1992 and again in 2005.

Participants were asked about the negativity of their relationships with three key people in their lives: their spouse or partner, a child, and a best friend. Specifically, they rated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the following two statements about each relationship: “My (spouse/partner, child, friend) gets on my nerves” and “My (spouse/partner, child, friend) makes too many demands on me.”

At both points in time, older adults (age 60-plus) had the least negative relationships with spouses, children and friends. According to Birditt, this finding is consistent with other research showing that older adults are likely to report less conflict than do younger adults in their relationships.

Participants in their 20s and 30s reported having the most negative relationships overall.

For all age groups, including adults in their 40s and 50s, the spousal relationship was seen as the most negative and it tended to increase in negativity over time.

“The increases in negativity over time may be indicative of learned patterns of interaction which have been reinforced and tend to persist over time,” Birditt said. “Other studies have found that negative communication increases over time and relationship quality decreases, especially after having children.”

“Interestingly, as relationships with spouses become more negative, relationships with children and friends appear to become less demanding and irritating over time.”

In future research, Birditt plans to study how the way we respond to negativity influences well-being. “How we respond to negativity in close relationships affects every aspect of our lives – at work and at home,” she said. “In fact, it’s likely that how we deal with it – not whether it exists – is what really matters. One thing I’m interested in exploring is how avoidance affects negativity over time. All kinds of research show that older people have less negative relationships. And we also know that older adults are more likely than younger people to report that they try to deal with conflict by avoiding confrontations, rather than by discussing problems.

“That may be another reason that negativity tends to increase over time in the relationship with a partner or spouse – when you’re living together, it’s a lot harder to avoid each other.”


http://www.umich.edu/

Do friends wear the same style of shoe or see the same movies because they have similar tastes, which is why they became friends in the first place? Or once a friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt like behaviors?


Social scientists don't know for sure. They're still trying to understand the role social influence plays in the spreading of trends because the real world doesn't keep track of how people acquire new items or preferences.

But the virtual world Second Life does. Researchers from the University of Michigan have taken advantage of this unique information to study how "gestures" make their way through this online community. Gestures are code snippets that Second Life avatars must acquire in order to make motions such as dancing, waving or chanting.

Roughly half of the gestures the researchers studied made their way through the virtual world friend by friend.

"We could have found that most everyone goes to the store to buy gestures, but it turns out about 50 percent of gesture transfers are between people who have declared themselves friends. The social networks played a major role in the distribution of these assets," said Lada Adamic, an assistant professor in the School of Information and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Adamic is an author of a paper on the research that graduate student Eytan Bakshy will present on July 7 at the Association for Computer Machinery's Conference on Electronic Conference in Stanford, Calif. Bakshy is a doctoral student in the School of Information.

"There's been a high correspondence between the real world and virtual worlds," Adamic said. "We're not saying this is exactly how people share in the real world, but we believe it does have some relevance."

This study is one of the first to model social influence in a virtual world because of the rarity of having access to information about how information, assets or ideas propagate. In Second Life, the previous owner of a gesture is listed.

The researchers also found that the gestures that spread from friend to friend were not distributed as broadly as ones that were distributed outside of the social network, such as those acquired in stores or as give-aways.

And they discovered that the early adopters of gestures who are among the first 5-10 percent to acquire new assets are not the same as the influencers, who tend to distribute them most broadly. This aligns with what social scientists have found.

"In our study, we sought to develop a more rigorous understanding of social processes that underlies many cultural and economic phenomena," Bakshy said. "While some of our findings may seem quite intuitive, what I find most exciting is that we were actually able to test some rather controversial and competing hypotheses about the role of social networks in influence."

The researchers examined 130 days worth of gesture transfers in late 2008 and early 2009. They looked at 100,229 users and 106,499 gestures. They obtained the data from Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life. Personally-identifying information had been removed.


http://www.umich.edu/

Market crashes could lead to rises in homicides and suicides, unless governments invest in labour market protections, according to a study published in The Lancet.

Researchers at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Oxford University estimated that soaring stress brought on by job losses could prompt a 2.4% rise in suicide rates in people under-64 years of age, a 2.7% rise in heart attack deaths in men between 30 and 44 years, and a 2.4% rise in homicides rates, corresponding to thousands of deaths in European Union countries, such as the UK.

Government spending to keep people in employment and quickly get them back to work when they lose jobs could prevent these rises in deaths from occurring, the study says. When spending on such "active labour market programmes" is above US $190 (£115; €135) per person, financial crisis would not be a major killer.

The report also suggests that in poor countries, where investments in active labour market programmes are much lower or virtually non-existent, the death toll brought on by the financial meltdown would be much worse.

The study, entitled The public health effect of economic crisis and alternative government policy responses in Europe: an empirical analysis was written in the wake of concerns that health might suffer as a result of the financial crisis. It is thought to be the most comprehensive evaluation of the relationship between economic crises, unemployment and mortality in Europe and the first to consider the role of specific government responses.

"Financial crisis causes hardship for many ordinary people, but it does not have to cost them their lives", social epidemiologist David Stuckler, who led the research said. He continued, "Our findings show that investing in active labour market programmes can both help the economy and save lives."

The researchers studied mortality rates for over 30 causes of death from the World Health Organisation's Health for All Database between the years 1970 and 2007. They then compared the results to unemployment data from the International Labour Organisation, and data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development describing different types of government social programme expenditures during the same period. Models were used to control variables such as past employment and mortality trends, differing degrees to which countries monitor suicides and unemployment, and population ageing.

Previous studies in individual countries had found mixed results – in Sweden, finding no effect of financial crises on health, but in Spain and the US, finding some negative effects and in some cases improved health. The researchers found that whether more people died depended on how much countries spent on social protections, including active labour market programmes.

In the UK, where currently about US$150 (£91; €107) per head per year is spent on active labour market programmes, the researchers estimated that at least 25 to 290 suicides would occur as a direct result of the financial crisis.

Professor Martin McKee at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and one of the report's authors, noted that "Suicides are just the tip of the iceberg – rising suicide rates are a sign of many failed suicide attempts and high levels of mental distress among workers and families."

As with any ecological study, the analysis had several limitations. The analysis focused on the experience of entire populations, and vulnerable groups, such as migrants or refugees, could suffer disproportionately even when social spending was high. Data on social protections were also missing for many countries, in particular for most central and eastern European countries, where unemployment rates tended to be higher than the west EU and social spending was much lower.

The researchers estimated that rising unemployment rates by 3% could prompt a 2.4% rise in suicide rates in people under-64 years of age and a 2.4% rise in homicides rates, but a drop in traffic fatalities by 4.2% in European Union countries, such as the UK. The study's findings were consistent with recent reports in the UK of rising suicides and falling traffic volume. Unemployed persons have two times the risk of death as employed persons due to suicides, and during recession people walk instead of drive or use public transit, reducing risks of road injury and death.

Sanjay Basu, at University of California at San Francisco pointed out that, "The analysis suggests that governments may be able to do something to protect their populations, specifically by budgeting for measures that help people get back into work." He continued, "This report shows that government spending programmes designed to stimulate the economy could also be used to prevent potentially thousands of deaths."

The report "The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: an empirical analysis" will be published on July 8th issue of The Lancet.

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/

In times of doubt and uncertainty, many Americans turn to self-help books in search of encouragement, guidance and self-affirmation. The positive self-statements suggested in these books, such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed," are designed to lift a person's low self-esteem and push them into positive action.

According to a recent study in Psychological Science, however, these statements can actually have the opposite effect.

Psychologists Joanne V. Wood and John W. Lee from the University of Waterloo, and W.Q. Elaine Perunovic from the University of New Brunswick, found that individuals with low self-esteem actually felt worse about themselves after repeating positive self-statements.

The researchers asked participants with low self-esteem and high self-esteem to repeat the self-help book phrase "I am a lovable person." The psychologists then measured the participants' moods and their momentary feelings about themselves. As it turned out, the individuals with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement compared to another low self-esteem group who did not repeat the self-statement. The individuals with high self-esteem felt better after repeating the positive self-statement--but only slightly.

In a follow-up study, the psychologists allowed the participants to list negative self-thoughts along with positive self-thoughts. They found that, paradoxically, low self-esteem participants' moods fared better when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts.

The psychologists suggested that, like overly positive praise, unreasonably positive self-statements, such as "I accept myself completely," can provoke contradictory thoughts in individuals with low self-esteem. Such negative thoughts can overwhelm the positive thoughts. And, if people are instructed to focus exclusively on positive thoughts, they may find negative thoughts to be especially discouraging.

As the authors concluded, "Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people [such as individuals with high self-esteem] but backfire for the very people who need them the most."


http://www.psychologicalscience.org/