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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Mate Preferences Do Predict Attraction And Choices In The Early Stages Of Mate Selection, Norman P. Li, Jose C. Yong, William Tov, Oliver Sng, Garth J. O. Fletcher, Katherine A. Valentine, Yun F. Jiang, Daniel Balliet Nov 2013

Mate Preferences Do Predict Attraction And Choices In The Early Stages Of Mate Selection, Norman P. Li, Jose C. Yong, William Tov, Oliver Sng, Garth J. O. Fletcher, Katherine A. Valentine, Yun F. Jiang, Daniel Balliet

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although mate preference research has firmly established that men value physical attractiveness more than women do and women value social status more than men do, recent speed-dating studies have indicated mixed evidence (at best) for whether people’s sex-differentiated mate preferences predict actual mate choices. According to an evolutionary, mate preference priority model (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier, 2002; Li & KENRICK, 2006; Li, Valentine, & Patel, 2011), the sexes are largely similar in what they ideally like, but for long-term mates, they should differ on what they most want to avoid in early selection contexts. Following this model, we conducted …


The Uneven Representation Of Women In Asian Parliaments: Explaining Variation Across The Region, Devin K. Joshi, Kara Kingma Nov 2013

The Uneven Representation Of Women In Asian Parliaments: Explaining Variation Across The Region, Devin K. Joshi, Kara Kingma

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although home to the majority of the world's women, Asia is the continent with the smallest proportion of women in Parliament. Rarely studied from a comparative perspective, this article examines the uneven representation of women in the lower houses of contemporary Asian parliaments. While socio-economic modernization and industrialization are generally expected to increase the proportion of women in positions of political influence, we find that differences in electoral and party systems across Asia play a greater role than levels of female literacy, urbanization, or per capita income. In particular, Asian parliaments with strict quotas and a higher number of (three …


Gender Disparities In Self-Employment In Urban China's Market Transition: Income Inequality, Occupational Segregation And Mobility Processes, Qian Forrest Zhang Sep 2013

Gender Disparities In Self-Employment In Urban China's Market Transition: Income Inequality, Occupational Segregation And Mobility Processes, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper presents the first quantitative analysis of gender disparities in selfemployment in urban China. It documents the extent of gender income inequality in selfemployment. By disaggregating self-employment into three occupational classes, it shows the gender segregation within self-employment—women were concentrated in the financially least rewarding segment—and identifies it as a main source of the gender income inequality. It examines a range of determinants of participation in self employment—family structure, family background, and career history—and how their gender-specific effects contributed to gender segregation. Although using data from a 1996 national survey, this study captures two key processes that shaped the …


Playing Hard-To-Get: Manipulating One's Perceived Availability As A Mate, Peter K. Jonason, Norman P. Li Sep 2013

Playing Hard-To-Get: Manipulating One's Perceived Availability As A Mate, Peter K. Jonason, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

‘Playing hard-to-get’ is a mating tactic in which people give the impression that they are ostensibly uninterested to get others to desire them more. This topic has received little attention because of theoretical and methodological limitations of prior work. We present four studies drawn from four different American universities that examined playing hard-to-get as part of a supply-side economics model of dating. In Studies 1a (N = 100) and 1b (N = 491), we identified the tactics that characterize playing hard-to-get and how often men and women enact them. In Study 2 (N = 290), we assessed reasons why men …


Locating The Social Ladder Across Cultures And Identities, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan, Melanie B. Tannenbaum Jun 2013

Locating The Social Ladder Across Cultures And Identities, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan, Melanie B. Tannenbaum

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is rare to have the opportunity to write a theory paper on a topic that, we believe at least, will become a very important part of psychological research in the future. That this target article has sparked such a high level of sophistication in the commentaries is indicative of this possibility; psychologists have truly arrived at the forefront of the social class discussion, and we are very excited to be a part of it! In the spirit of moving forward this discussion, each of the commentaries raises a number of important points that intersect with our own theory. Engaging …


The Social Ladder: A Rank-Based Perspective On Social Class, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan, Melanie B. Tannenbaum Jun 2013

The Social Ladder: A Rank-Based Perspective On Social Class, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan, Melanie B. Tannenbaum

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Scholars across the social sciences have studied social class for centuries. In this review, we suggest that social class is a fundamental means by which individuals are ranked on the social ladder of society. A rank-based perspective on social class shines light on several future areas of research: Specifically, understanding how social class ranks individuals vis-à-vis others leads to predictions about how class is signaled in interactions, influences social cognition and health, is shaped by global economic inequality trends, and changes across the life course. Importantly, our theory highlights the potential of experimental manipulations of social class rank for testing …


Military Service, Exposure To Trauma, And Health In Older Adulthood: An Analysis Of Northern Vietnamese Older Adults, Kim Korinek, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan Apr 2013

Military Service, Exposure To Trauma, And Health In Older Adulthood: An Analysis Of Northern Vietnamese Older Adults, Kim Korinek, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The long-term, indirect effects of war on older adult health are poorly understood, especially in less developed societies where armed conflict concentrates. In this paper we analyse the determinants of self-reported health, chronic conditions, somatoform symptoms and depressive symptoms in a sample of northern Vietnamese ages 55 and older, who encountered mass mobilization for war and widespread exposure to war traumas in early adulthood. Results of multivariate models indicate that service in combat roles predicts poor self-reported health, health complaints and chronic illness in late adulthood. No such relationship is observed for depressive symptoms, a pattern consistent with previous research …


The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan Apr 2013

The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties. Self-employed migrant families replaced salaried state employees in the labour force. Governments’ increased control over urban public space reduced the room for informal markets, exacerbating the scarcity of vegetable retail space. Fragmentation in the production and wholesale systems restricted modern supermarkets’ ability to establish …


Health Inequalities Among Older Adults In Vietnam: Evidence From The 2011 Vietnam National Aging Survey, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Thanh Long Giang Apr 2013

Health Inequalities Among Older Adults In Vietnam: Evidence From The 2011 Vietnam National Aging Survey, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Thanh Long Giang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Vietnam’s economic development, change in health infrastructure, demographic and epidemiological transitions, and projected rapid population aging point to the need for understanding issues related to the wellbeing of older adults. Few recent studies that examine old-age health among specific Vietnamese populations notwithstanding, a national profile of older adults’ health, particularly health inequalities among the aged, is still lacking for Vietnam. To address this gap, we analyze nationally representative data from Vietnam’s first national survey of older adults to examine socioeconomic gradients in health at older ages in urban and rural Vietnam. Our specific research questions include: how are various measures …


China’S Agrarian Reform And The Privatization Of Land: A Contrarian View, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Mar 2013

China’S Agrarian Reform And The Privatization Of Land: A Contrarian View, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Many media and scholars outside China are advocating for the privatization of land ownership in China, claiming it to be a necessary step before China can transform its agriculture into large-scale, market-oriented and technology-intensive modern agriculture. Chinese scholars advocating land privatization, on the other hand, typically argue that land privatization would offer farmers more protection of their rights. In this paper, we present a contrarian view to these calls for land privatization published in both mainstream media and academic journals. We argue that, under China’s current system of collective land ownership and individualized land use rights, the aforementioned goals can …


Singapore Food Seriously On My Mind, Margaret Chan Mar 2013

Singapore Food Seriously On My Mind, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.


Transnational Youth Transitions: Becoming Adults Between Vancouver And Hong Kong, Justin Kh Tse, Johanna L. Waters Feb 2013

Transnational Youth Transitions: Becoming Adults Between Vancouver And Hong Kong, Justin Kh Tse, Johanna L. Waters

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the context of the academic interest shown in the enduring transnation-alism of contemporary migrants and in the modes of transitions to adulthood in different global settings, in this article we examine the transnational lives of adolescents moving between Vancouver (Canada) and Hong Kong. While there is a lot of literature on the parents’ political and economic calculations, there is very little on how adolescents in these situations articulate their geographical sensibilities. We draw on three periods of fieldwork undertaken in 2002, 2008 and 2010 during which we employed a transnational methodology to interview young people in Vancouver and Hong …


Landscape Configuration And Urban Heat Island Effects: Assessing The Relationship Between Landscape Characteristics And Land Surface Temperature In Phoenix, Arizona, John Patrick Connors, Christopher S. Galletti, Winston T. L. Chow Feb 2013

Landscape Configuration And Urban Heat Island Effects: Assessing The Relationship Between Landscape Characteristics And Land Surface Temperature In Phoenix, Arizona, John Patrick Connors, Christopher S. Galletti, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The structure of urban environments is known to alter local climate, in part due to changes in land cover. A growing subset of research focuses specifically on the UHI in terms of land surface temperature by using data from remote sensing platforms. Past research has established a clear relationship between land surface temperature and the proportional area of land covers, but less research has specifically examined the effects of the spatial patterns of these covers. This research considers the rapidly growing City of Phoenix, Arizona in the United States. To better understand how landscape structure affects local climate, we explored …


Comparing Local Models Of Agrarian Transition In China, Qian Forrest Zhang Jan 2013

Comparing Local Models Of Agrarian Transition In China, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The development of markets and the penetration of capital into agriculture have started the agrarian transition in rural China, which is transforming smallholding, household-based agriculture into various forms of capitalistic production. This again raises in a new historical and social context the long-debated question in the agrarian transition literature: Can family farms survive the onslaught of capitalist agriculture based on wage labor and what shapes the confrontation between family farms and agro-capital? I argue that it is the local political economy—rather than some natural obstacles in agriculture to the penetration of capitalism—that shapes this confrontation and gives rise to a …


International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif Jan 2013

International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The paper argues that without a realistic understanding of criminal enterprise located against the commercial forces shaping contemporary Asian market contexts, then domestic, bi-lateral, regional and international control initiatives are not only likely to fail in their regulatory objectives, but the premises on which they are constructed may heighten the market conditions for crime business profitability.The international convention-based approach to regulating transnational and organized crime is the framework from which a critique of non-market centred law enforcement control concentrations is developed. This critique reveals the transposition of flawed normative control considerations from domestic to supra-national control contexts, and shows how …


Quick And Dirty: Some Psychosocial Costs Associated With The Dark Triad In Three Countries, Peter K. Jonason, Norman P. Li, Anna Z. Czarna Jan 2013

Quick And Dirty: Some Psychosocial Costs Associated With The Dark Triad In Three Countries, Peter K. Jonason, Norman P. Li, Anna Z. Czarna

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The current study provides the first examination of the relationship between life history indicators and the Dark Triad traits in an international sample drawn from the U.S. (n = 264), Singapore (n = 185), and Poland (n = 177). In all three samples, the Dark Triad traits were associated with psychosocial costs, although there were more links in the Singaporean and Polish samples than in the American sample. In the U.S., the quality of one’s romantic relationships and psychopathy were negatively correlated. Narcissism was higher in the Polish and American samples than in the Singaporean sample. Men scored higher than …