1,236 research outputs found
Failure to Meet Generative Self-Expectations is Linked to Poorer CognitiveâAffective Well-Being
Objectives
Generativity, or concern with contributing to others, is theorized to be an important goal of mid-to-late life. Greater self-perceptions of generativity are associated with better well-being over time. The aim of this study is to examine how generative self-perceptions and failure to meet generative expectations over time are linked to specific cognitiveâaffective states (feelings of connectedness, self-worth, and positive affect), and consequently, life satisfaction.
Method
Analyses used data from Waves 2 and 3 of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). Multiple mediation was utilized to assess whether these cognitiveâaffective states linked generative failure to decreased life satisfaction. A JohnsonâNeyman moderation analysis determined whether these associations vary with age.
Results
In demographically adjusted regressions, generative contributions and expectations were associated with greater perceived social connectedness, self-worth, and positive effect. Generative failure was associated with lower life satisfaction, a link that was strongest in the middle-aged and young-old and mediated by the cognitiveâaffective states.
Discussion
Greater feelings of generativity, and more positive expectations for future contributions, are associated cross-sectionally and over time with better affective well-being. Positive affect, social connectedness, and self-worth may partially explain why generative failure over time is linked to decreased life satisfaction
Can I Buy My Health? A Genetically Informed Study of Socioeconomic Status and Health
Background
A large literature demonstrates associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, including physiological health and well-being. Moreover, gender differences are often observed among measures of both SES and health. However, relationships between SES and health are sometimes questioned given the lack of true experiments, and the potential biological and SES mechanisms explaining gender differences in health are rarely examined simultaneously.
Purpose
To use a national sample of twins to investigate lifetime socioeconomic adversity and a measure of physiological dysregulation separately by sex.
Methods
Using the twin sample in the second wave of the Midlife in the United States survey (MIDUS II), biometric regression analysis was conducted to determine whether the established SES-physiological health association is observed among twins both before and after adjusting for potential familial-level confounds (additive genetic and shared environmental influences that may underly the SES-health link), and whether this association differs among men and women.
Results
Although individuals with less socioeconomic adversity over the lifespan exhibited less physiological dysregulation among this sample of twins, this association only persisted among male twins after adjusting for familial influences.
Conclusions
Findings from the present study suggest that, particularly for men, links between socioeconomic adversity and health are not spurious or better explained by additive genetic or early shared environmental influences. Furthermore, gender-specific role demands may create differential associations between SES and health
American jihadi terrorism: A comparison of homicides and unsuccessful plots
While the number of American jihadi terrorist attacks remains relatively rare, terrorist plots thwarted by law enforcement have increased since September 11, 2001. Although these law enforcement blocks of would-be terrorists are considered counterterrorism triumphs by the FBI, human rights and civil liberty watch groups have conversely suggested that those who plan for attacks alongside government informants and undercover agents may be unique and essentially dissimilar from terrorists. Underlying this debate is the empirical question of how planned yet unsuccessful attacks and their plotters compare to successful terrorist homicides and their perpetrators. The current study addresses this question by comparatively examining jihadi terrorist homicides and unsuccessful plots occurring in part or wholly on U.S. soil between 1990 and 2014. Data for this study come from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), an open-source database with information on terrorism and extremist crimes. Based on these data, descriptive statistics are provided for several incident, offender, and target variables across three jihadi terrorist violence categories, including homicides, plots with specified targets, and plots with non-specific targets. We find several important differences across categories of terrorist violence, suggesting that unsuccessful plotters and their intended crimes vary from their more successful terrorist counterparts
Patterns of Lone Actor Terrorism in the United States
This research explores the differences in geospatial and temporal patterns between lone actor and group-based terrorists in the United States. These include differences in demographics, precursor activities, proximity to the terrorism incidents, and longevity of conducting terrorist activities. Data for this analysis were derived from the American Terrorism Study (ATS). The ATS includes information on federal criminal cases resulting from FBI investigations for âterrorism or terrorism-related activities.â The analysis includes data from 264 prevented or completed terrorism incidents in the United States from 1980-present. These incidents involved 314 indictees charged with over 3,000 federal criminal counts. They were responsible for 1,788 recorded precursor activities that occurred at over 1,100 geocoded addresses
CASTNet: Community-Attentive Spatio-Temporal Networks for Opioid Overdose Forecasting
Opioid overdose is a growing public health crisis in the United States. This
crisis, recognized as "opioid epidemic," has widespread societal consequences
including the degradation of health, and the increase in crime rates and family
problems. To improve the overdose surveillance and to identify the areas in
need of prevention effort, in this work, we focus on forecasting opioid
overdose using real-time crime dynamics. Previous work identified various types
of links between opioid use and criminal activities, such as financial motives
and common causes. Motivated by these observations, we propose a novel
spatio-temporal predictive model for opioid overdose forecasting by leveraging
the spatio-temporal patterns of crime incidents. Our proposed model
incorporates multi-head attentional networks to learn different representation
subspaces of features. Such deep learning architecture, called
"community-attentive" networks, allows the prediction of a given location to be
optimized by a mixture of groups (i.e., communities) of regions. In addition,
our proposed model allows for interpreting what features, from what
communities, have more contributions to predicting local incidents as well as
how these communities are captured through forecasting. Our results on two
real-world overdose datasets indicate that our model achieves superior
forecasting performance and provides meaningful interpretations in terms of
spatio-temporal relationships between the dynamics of crime and that of opioid
overdose.Comment: Accepted as conference paper at ECML-PKDD 201
Temporal Sequencing, Incident Sophistication, and Terrorist Outcomes
There have been few efforts to examine how the planning process affects the outcome of a terrorist plot. This research brief provides some preliminary findings from an examination of the impact of the length of the planning process, the impact of multiple participants, and the volume of precursor activity on the success or failure of terrorist plots in the United States. While conventional wisdom holds true that a shorter planning process and fewer preparatory activities reduces perpetrators chances of getting caught therefore increases success rate, the new findings show that the more people involved in the planning process also increases the probability of success
Sequencing Terrorists\u27 Precursor Behaviors: A Crime Specific Analysis
Recently completed research (Smith et al., 2016) suggests that radicalization toward violence is best viewed as a process â a journey that begins with a less-radical identity and moves toward a more radical identity and corresponding orientation. Efforts to test this theoretical assertion revealed that the process of identity construction involves a variety of behaviors that David Snow has referred to as âidentify workâ (Snow and Machalek, 1983; Snow and McAdam, 2000; Snow, 2004; Cross and Snow, 2011). One type of identity work âdemonstration events â appeared to be particularly relevant to our ability to predict radicalization toward violence and subsequent terrorism. The commission of acts in preparation for a terrorism incident serves to âdemonstrateâ the individual participantâs commitment to the cause as well as solidifying their radicalization to violence. The number and type of these demonstration events were significantly related to the terroristsâ rank or status in the cell or group, the severity of preparatory crimes they committed, and the number of terrorism incidents in which the individual was involved (Smith et al., 2016)
Liberal alcohol legislation: does it amplify the effects among Swiss men of personârelated risk factors on heavy alcohol use?
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