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This paper explores the presence and consideration of economics in sociology, specifically its classical version. It identifies certain original and independent economic theories, concepts and approaches in classical sociological theory as central and its derivations, implications and extensions of economics as peripheral. The paper argues and demonstrates that classical sociology is far from being the science of noneconomic or irrational phenomena, as often sociologists conceive it and economists perceive it in counter-distinction from economics defined as the science of rational behavior, and indeed encompasses virtually all economic activities and processes, and thus prefigures New Economic Sociology adopting the same approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined, with a behavioral paradigm, to what extent people choose to view stimuli that portray death, violence or harm. Based on briefly presented visual cues, participants made choices between highly arousing, negative images and positive or negative alternatives. The negative images displayed social scenes that involved death, violence or harm (e.g., war scene), or decontextualized, close-ups of physical harm (e.g., mutilated face) or natural threat (e.g., attacking shark). The results demonstrated that social negative images were chosen significantly more often than other negative categories. Furthermore, participants preferred social negative images over neutral images. Physical harm images and natural threat images were not preferred over neutral images, but were chosen in about thirty-five percent of the trials. These results were replicated across three different studies, including a study that presented verbal descriptions of images as pre-choice cues. Together, these results show that people deliberately subject themselves to negative images. With this, the present paper demonstrates a dynamic relationship between negative information and behavior and advances new insights into the phenomenon of morbid curiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is still a common practice in many countries in Africa and the Middle East. Understanding the determinants of FGM can lead to more active interventions to prevent this harmful practice. The goal of this study is to explore factors associated with FGM behavior among Iranian mothers and their daughters. Based on Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, we examined the predictive value of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and several socio-demographic variables in relation to mothers’ intentions to mutilate their daughters. A paper-and-pencil survey was conducted among 300 mothers (mean age = 33.20, SD = 9.09) who had at least one daughter and who lived in Ravansar, a county in Kermanshah Province in Iran. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relationships among the study variables. Our results indicate that attitude is the strongest predictor of mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM, followed by subjective norms. Compared to younger mothers, older mothers have more positive attitudes toward FGM, perceive themselves as having more control over their behavior and demonstrate a greater intention to allow their daughter to undergo FGM. Furthermore, we found that less educated mothers and mothers living in rural areas had more positive attitudes toward FGM and feel more social pressure to allow FGM. The model accounts for 93 percent of the variance in the mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM. Intervention programs that want to decrease FGM might focus primarily on converting mothers’ neutral or positive feelings toward FGM into negative attitudes and on alleviating the perceived social pressure to mutilate one’s daughter. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations about how to curtail mothers’ intentions to allow their daughters to undergo FGM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]