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• Judith Rich Harris' Nurture Assumption has had a profound impact on the understanding of human development. • I detail how JRH's scholarship has altered my approach to the study of crime and criminals. • I discuss how the field of criminology has remained steadfast in their resistance to JRH's work. The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris was a revolutionary book that called into question the family socialization literature and the conventional ways in which parenting is typically studied by social scientists. In the 25 years since it was first published, the key arguments set forth in The Nurture Assumption still remain on the margins of most fields of study and not fully integrated into individual research agendas. In this paper, I focus on how Judith Rich Harris has impacted my scholarly thinking and my academic career as a criminologist. In doing so, I discuss the ways in which Judith Rich Harris' views can guide criminological thinking and the reasons why the field of criminology has been and continues to be resistant to her and The Nurture Assumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) mitigate human rights violations when armed conflict ensues? There is a reason to believe that the harsh conditions of war, which destabilize society and incite nationalist and militarist notions, would prevent the work of INGO from being effective. However, world polity scholarship suggests that regardless of these conditions INGOs can improve human rights standards. INGOs are one of the principal and most effective vehicles for the diffusion of international human rights norms. In this paper, we highlight the part INGOs play in monitoring human rights violations and its potential effect on states' human rights violations during war. Examining a global sample of countries that experienced war on their soil between 1977 and 2003, this paper studies the association between INGOs count per country per year with four human rights indexes. Results show an association between the presence of INGOs and improvement of human rights conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper discusses regression analysis of incomplete event history studies with a focus on simultaneous estimation and variable selection. Such studies are commonly performed in areas such as medical studies and social sciences, and a great deal of literature has been devoted to their analysis except for the problem considered here (Sun and Zhao, 2013). We develop a new method, which will be referred to as a broken adaptive ridge regression approach. We establish its asymptotic properties, including the oracle property and clustering effect. We also report simulation results which indicate that the proposed method performs well, and better than the existing methods, in practice. In addition, an application is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Repeated measures designs are frequently used for planning experiments in the life or social sciences. Typical examples include the comparison of different treatments over time, where both factor levels may possess an additional structure. For such designs, the statistical analysis typically consists of several steps. If the global null is rejected, multiple comparisons are performed. Usually, general factorial repeated measures designs are inferred by classical linear mixed models. Common underlying assumptions, such as normality or variance homogeneity are, however, often not met in practice. Furthermore, when dealing with, e.g., ordinal or ordered categorical data, means are no longer meaningful to describe an effect and other effect sizes should be used. To this end, we developmultiple contrast tests for nonparametric treatment effects in general factorial repeated measures designs within this paper and equip them with a novel, asymptotically correct wild bootstrap approach. Because regulatory authorities require the calculation of confidence intervals, this work also provides simultaneous confidence intervals for linear contrasts and for the ratio of different contrasts in meaningful effects. Extensive simulations are conducted to foster the theoretical findings. Finally, the analysis of two datasets exemplify the applicability of the novel procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The study of temporal dynamics is essential to the advance of social science. In the study of inequality, preliminary to explaining patterns in gaps between groups is the prior task of detecting those patterns. Developing a multiple latent trajectory strategy, this paper proposes an inductive approach to the detection of inequality trends. Investigating managerial representation for Black men, Black women, White women and White men in a very large panel sample of private sector workplaces, we show that trajectories of managerial representation for each status group are much more complex than the common deductive approach leads us to believe. In fact, the volatility and the multiplicity of trajectories is one of the markers of enduring disadvantage for African Americans. Further, we demonstrate that current organizational inequality explanations can be employed and improved within this inductive methodology. The findings underscore the importance of interaction and contingency in the production of inequalities, in agreement with relational approaches to organizational inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Solidarity and punishment are both central to maintaining social order, but their interaction remains poorly understood. A number of studies report that punishment undermines solidarity in domains of generalized exchange, whereas other studies find that punishment furthers norm-compliant behavior and thereby promotes solidarity in the realm of public goods. Using a laboratory experiment, this study is the first to directly compare the effect of centralized punishment on solidarity between generalized exchange and public good settings. The results reveal that it is generalized exchange where centralized punishment induces solidarity, whereas in the public good setting the effect of punishment is negligible. The paper concludes that the structure of generalized exchange alone is insufficient to induce solidarity. In addition, generalized exchange systems require external stabilization, as provided by centralized punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though there is a wide and diverse body of literature on interaction theory in the social sciences, it is only recently that the economic, political, and cultural implications of interaction have been studied in ancient Andean societies. This paper explores the outcomes of interaction between Chancay settlers and local chaupiyunginos in the Huanangue Valley, Peru, during the Late Intermediate Period (1100–1470 CE). Drawing from entanglement theory—which explores the complex types of relationships that develop between groups when exotic goods are inserted into local systems of value (Dietler, 1998, 2010; Hodder, 2012 )—I argue that intergroup exchange and resource sharing could draw small scale groups living on the western slopes of the Andes into webs of interdependency. Using a combination of ethnohistoric and archaeological data, I argue that Chancay colonists became entangled with local chaupiyunginos due to the Chancay’s need for irrigation water and the chaupiyungino ’s desire for marine goods. Furthermore, though many cases of entanglement lead to one group being subjugated by the other, the Chancay’s economic power and the chaupiyungino ’s tactical power may have prevented this from happening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observed friendship choices are constrained by social structures and thus problematic indicators for underlying personal preferences. In this paper, we report on a study demonstrating the causal effects of preference in friendship choice based on an online field experiment. Specifically, we tested two important forces that govern friendship choices: preference for shared group identity (operationalized as the desire to befriend others sharing the same place-of-origin identity) and preference for high status (operationalized as the desire to befriend others from high-status institutions). Using an online field experiment in one of the largest social network service websites in China, we investigated the causal preference effects of these two forces free from structural constraints. The results of our study confirm the preference effects on friendship choice in both of the two dimensions we tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly half a century, psychologists, pediatricians and psychiatrists have studied the potential impact of media violence on aggression and societal violence, particularly among youth. Despite hundreds of studies, scholars have failed to find consensus on potential effects. Nonetheless, professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Psychological Association have released policy statements conclusively linking violent media to societal concerns. In reaction, some scholars have accused these professional groups of distorting evidence and failing to inform the public of the inconsistent nature of studies in this field. The current paper reviews recent research on media violence. It concludes that caution is recommended in public statements regarding media effects and that professional groups risk serious reputation damage with policy statements calling for behavioral change without clear reflection of the current evidence-base of the research. Recommendations are provided for practitioners and for science policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urgent environmental issues are testing the limits of current management approaches and pushing demand for innovative approaches that integrate across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Practitioners, scholars, and policy-makers alike call for increased integration of natural and social sciences to develop new approaches that address the range of ecological and societal impacts of modern environmental issues. From a theoretical perspective, social-ecological systems (SES) science offers a compelling approach for improved environmental management through the application of transdisciplinary and resilience concepts. A framework for translating SES theory into practice, however, is lacking. In this paper, we define the key components of an SES-based environmental management approach. We offer recommendations for integrating an SES approach into existing environmental management practices. Results presented are useful for management professionals that seek to employ an SES environmental management approach and scholars aiming to advance the theoretical foundations of SES science for practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Latent Class Models (LCM) can be applied in social research, when the basic assumptions of regression models cannot be validated. We examine the usefulness of this method with data collected from a study on the relationship between bridging social capital and the Internet. Social capital is defined here as the resources that are potentially available in one’s social ties. Bridging is a dimension of social capital, usually related to weak ties (acquaintances), and a source of instrumental resources such as information. The study surveyed a stratified random sample of 417 inhabitants of Lisbon, Portugal. We used LCM to create the variable bridging social capital, but also to estimate the relationship between bridging social capital and Internet usage when we encountered convergence problems with the logistic regression analysis. We conclude by showing a positive relationship between bridging and Internet usage, and by discussing the potential of LCM for social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]