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In this paper, the social psychology of uncertainty management is used to explain reactions to socially deviating people. In Study 1, we examine how people react to a person communicating negative messages about their home country; in Study 2, how a representative sample of the Dutch society reacts to encounters with a homeless person; and in Study 3, what the behavioral and psychological reactions are of people in an anticipated interaction with a homeless individual. All 3 studies reveal that personal uncertainty—whether made salient in a subtle manner or measured by means of individual differences in the extent to which uncertainty is considered an emotionally threatening experience—is an important determinant of reactions to socially deviating persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to open the ‘black box’ of knowledge spillovers by testing the extent to which social interactions between firms in a region positively contribute to firm performance. Specifically, we examine the Marshall-Jacobs controversy, a debate over whether these spillovers occur across firms operating in similar or dissimilar fields. Our empirical examination of the debate relies on a dataset that is constructed from three sources: firm-level data of 1,881 high-tech firms in all 40 Dutch regions, regional economic data and network data constructed from the membership registrations of all business associations in a sample of 11 regions. The results show that the total amount of regional network activity has no effect on individual firm performance; however, participation in local business networks does support firm employment growth. With regards to the Marshall-Jacobs controversy, the results show that having local links to other high-tech firms is conducive to a firm's employment growth, while links to other types of firms provided no such lift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how rural and urban adolescents use the Internet as a tool for communication in their social environment. It aims to analyse the differences in the use of the Internet to overcome environmental constraints between urban and rural adolescents. In this paper, environmental constraints are defined in two ways: (1) The lack of contacts that a person may have in his/her local environment and (2) The distance between the contacts that prevents him/her from having face-to-face social interaction. The empirical part of the research is a questionnaire-based survey of two samples of pre-university high school pupils in Den Bosch and Winterswijk in the Netherlands. The outcomes of the research show that pupils in the urban area find more emotional support in their physical environment than pupils from the rural area and that they also receive more emotional support via the Internet than their rural counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I hypothesize and show evidence for a causal link between local land use systems and popular receptivity to ascetic, rationalist religions in sixteenth-century Germany, France, the Netherlands, and England. Rationalist religions typically received popular support in regions characterized by individual property rights in land and little communal control over agriculture. I argue that this social organization of agriculture gave rise to individualistic value systems, which had an affinity with rationalist, ascetic belief systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the construction of gendered identities in Dutch schools run by religious orders during the process of Catholic emancipation. It discusses the fragility of identity, the simultaneity of tradition and modernity, and the role that gender plays in all these interactions. Two schools in the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, are compared during the first half of the twentieth century: the Jesuit institution for boys, Canisius College, and the Ursuline college for girls next door, Mater Dei. At both, sport played an important role in the transmission of notions of Catholicism and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol consumption in the Netherlands increased at a very fast rate from 1960 to 1975, especially among young men. The question is raised whether members of the cohort that started drinking during the 1960s show ia lasting deviation from cohorts born earlier with respect to drinking behavior. Cohort analysis is used to assess the effects of aging, period and cohort membership on changes in abstinence, mean consumption and heavy drinking in the Netherlands in the last three decades. Social interaction theory (Skog, 1980) is used as an interpretative framework. Conclusions are that abstinence is related to aging, while mean consumption and heavy drinking are associated with period effects. Populations of men and women appear to change drinking behavior collectively. Results on women are more regular than those on men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]