The relationship between right-wing ideological attitudes and psychological well-being

The relationship between right-wing ideological attitudes and psychological well-being has been intensively studied. While some studies supported the hypothesis that right-wing attitudes are negatively related with well-being, other research yielded positive or non-significant relationships. We conducted a meta-analysis (total samples = 97, total N = 69,221) of measures of well-being, including positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, self-esteem and intrinsic goal pursuit. The obtained effect sizes were generally weak and non-significant, except for a moderate relationship between intrinsic goal pursuit and social dominance orientation. Our results thus do not support previous theories that claim that right-wing attitudes yield substantial relationships with psychological well-being

The European consumer: United in diversity?.

The ongoing unification which takes place on the European political scene, along with recent advances in consumer mobility and communication technology, raises the question whether the European Union can be treated as a single market to fully exploit the potential synergy effects from pan-European marketing strategies. Previous research, which mostly used domain-specific segmentation bases, has resulted in mixed conclusions. In this paper, a more general segmentation base is adopted, as we consider the homogeneity in the European countries' Consumer Confidence Indicators. Moreover, rather than analyzing more traditional static similarity measures, we adopt the concepts of dynamic correlation and cohesion between countries. The short-run fluctuations in consumer confidence are found to be largely country specific. However, a myopic focus on these fluctuations may inspire management to adopt multi-country strategies, foregoing the potential longer-run benefits from more standardized marketing strategies. Indeed, the Consumer Confidence Indicators become much more homogeneous as the planning horizon is extended. However, this homogeneity is found to remain inversely related to the cultural, economic and geographic distances among the various Member States. Hence, pan-regional rather pan-European strategies are called for.Communication; Consumer confidence; Country; Dynamic correlation; Effects; European unification; European Union; Indicators; Management; Market; Marketing; Planning; Research; Similarity; Strategy; Technology;

Homogeneity in Social Groups of Iraq

Homogeneity in Social Groups of Iraqis Jon Gresham, Farouk Saleh, Shara Majid June 2006 With appreciation to the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies for initiating the Second World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, this paper summarizes findings on homogeneity in community-level social groups derived from inter-ethnic research conducted during 2005 among Iraqi Arabs and Kurds living in the city of Basra, Iraq, and in the Netherlands. We found that perceptions towards out-groups were not based on religion, ethnicity, class, or location as in traditional individual-focused social networks. Patterns of perception towards out-groups seemed to be rooted in homogeneous social sub-groups with combinations of these factors. This research project used a 192-item survey of two hundred Iraqi business owners and managers in Iraq and in the Netherlands. It measured homogeneity of social group memberships. Survey elements included items drawn from the World Values Surveys (Inglehart), the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (Roper Center), and the Social Capital Inventory (Narayan and Cassidy). Homogeneity, relationship segregation, social trust, and community influence in social networks were estimated through indices reflecting components of social relationships in priority in-groups emerging from factor analysis of survey responses. Other indices included civic participation (socialization), perceptions of threat from out-groups, ethnic and religious identity, social trust, personal security, and contribution to community-based resources. Uniformity of responses to certain items about out-groups corresponded to findings by other authors on segregation and membership in social networks (Burt 1997, Buskins 2005, Inglehart 2004, Narayan and Cassidy 2001, Putnam 1995). This work was an expansion on a study on perceptions of threat from out-groups among Iraqis in five locations conducted in 2003 (Gresham 2004). This paper presents the following major sections: I. Introduction II. Purpose III. Background IV. Methodology V. Results VI. Reporting Process VII. Conclusions VIII. Further Work IX. Appendix X. End Notes *Jon Gresham, European Research Centre On Migration & Ethnic Relations, University of Utrecht, Netherlands Farouk Saleh, University of Tilburg, Netherlands Shara Majid, Erasmus University, Netherlands See other reports at: http://www.CivilSocietyIraq.seedwiki.co

Time as a limited resource: Communication Strategy in Mobile Phone Networks

We used a large database of 9 billion calls from 20 million mobile users to examine the relationships between aggregated time spent on the phone, personal network size, tie strength and the way in which users distributed their limited time across their network (disparity). Compared to those with smaller networks, those with large networks did not devote proportionally more time to communication and had on average weaker ties (as measured by time spent communicating). Further, there were not substantially different levels of disparity between individuals, in that mobile users tend to distribute their time very unevenly across their network, with a large proportion of calls going to a small number of individuals. Together, these results suggest that there are time constraints which limit tie strength in large personal networks, and that even high levels of mobile communication do not fundamentally alter the disparity of time allocation across networks.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Social Network

Sociolinguistic Conditioning of Phonetic Category Realisation in Non-Native Speech

The realisation of phonetic categories reflects a complex relationship between individual phonetic parameters and both linguistic and extra-linguistic conditioning of language usage. The present paper investigates the effect of selected socio-linguistic variables, such as the age, the amount of language use and cultural/social distance in English used by Polish immigrants to the U.S. Individual parameters used in the realisation of the category ‘voice’ have been found to vary in their sensitivity to extra-linguistic factors: while the production of target-like values of all parameters is related to the age, it is the closure duration that is most stable in the correspondence to the age and level of language proficiency. The VOT and vowel duration, on the other hand, prove to be more sensitive to the amount of language use and attitudinal factors

Topology of Networks in Generalized Musical Spaces

The abstraction of musical structures (notes, melodies, chords, harmonic or rhythmic progressions, etc.) as mathematical objects in a geometrical space is one of the great accomplishments of contemporary music theory. Building on this foundation, I generalize the concept of musical spaces as networks and derive functional principles of compositional design by the direct analysis of the network topology. This approach provides a novel framework for the analysis and quantification of similarity of musical objects and structures, and suggests a way to relate such measures to the human perception of different musical entities. Finally, the analysis of a single work or a corpus of compositions as complex networks provides alternative ways of interpreting the compositional process of a composer by quantifying emergent behaviors with well-established statistical mechanics techniques. Interpreting the latter as probabilistic randomness in the network, I develop novel compositional design frameworks that are central to my own artistic research

Cross-country typologies and development strategies to end hunger in Africa

The key motivation behind this study is to explore the many patterns of interactions between economic and non-economic factors in sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as Africa) in order to map out a typology of different types of country situations and thus, corresponding future options to develop strategies to end hunger and poverty in the region. The study builds on the earlier work of Irma Adelman and Cynthia Morris who argued that economic development is a dynamic, multi-faceted, nonlinear, and malleable process, a process explained by the many complex interactions between social, economic, political and institutional changes. As in Adelman and Morris, we use factor analysis to reduce a large number of variables into a manageable set of key factors. Next, using the newly developed classification and regression tree technique (CART), we link the outcome variables, such as per capital GDP and the prevalence of child malnutrition, with this smaller set of factors. This overcomes the limitations of Adelman and Morris. work that mixed the outcome and explanatory variables in their analysis. The analysis helps identify the most important factors for each outcome indicator, which provides guidance for defining the development of a typology and exploring future strategy options associated with each country type.