Normative Expectations Research Articles

Empirical Benchmarks to Interpret Intervention Effects on Student Achievement in Elementary and Secondary School: Meta-Analytic Results from Germany

To assess the meaningfulness of an intervention effect on students’ achievement, researchers may apply empirical benchmarks as standards for comparisons, involving normative expectations for students’ academic growth as well as performance gaps between weak and average schools or policy-relevant groups (e.g., male and female students, students from socioeconomically advantaged or disadvantaged families, students with or without a migration background). Previous research made these empirical benchmarks available for students in the United States. We expand this line of research by providing novel meta-analytic evidence on these empirical benchmarks for students attending elementary and secondary schools in Germany for a broad variety of achievement outcomes. Drawing on the results obtained for large probability samples, we observed variations in each kind of benchmark across countries as well as across and within domains and student subpopulations within Germany. Thus, the assessment of the very same intervention effect may depend on the target population and outcome of the intervention. We offer guidelines and illustrations for applying empirical benchmarks to assess the magnitude of intervention effects.

Japan’s Taiwan Policy in the Xi Jinping Era: Moving Toward Strategic Clarity

Like the United States, Japan views its relations with Taiwan through a greater China framework. It uses a similar strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan to navigate its relations with China and Taiwan. However, Japan’s recent strong support for Taiwan to counter China’s pressure on the island seems to suggest that Japan’s Taiwan policy is moving away from its old strategic ambiguity toward a new strategic clarity. Why has Japan started to protect Taiwan proactively and directly in recent years? How to explain the transformation of Japan’s policy regarding Taiwan from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity? Drawing upon various primary materials, this article approached those questions from a social constructivism lens. It argues that Japan’s new identity is a critical factor in Japan’s strategic transformation of its Taiwan policy. Japan’s new identity has first taken shape due to the growing challenge from China, and second been accelerated and hardened by the caprices of the United States. It is this new identity and its associated normative expectations that have caused Japan’s foreign behaviour to change fundamentally. This article will detail the process in which how Japan steadily changed its state identity over the years after showing that the existing explanations are unable to properly account for the shift of Japan’s policy toward Taiwan. Some policy implications will be offered in the conclusion section.

Latent network models to account for noisy, multiply reported social network data

AbstractSocial network data are often constructed by incorporating reports from multiple individuals. However, it is not obvious how to reconcile discordant responses from individuals. There may be particular risks with multiply reported data if people’s responses reflect normative expectations—such as an expectation of balanced, reciprocal relationships. Here, we propose a probabilistic model that incorporates ties reported by multiple individuals to estimate the unobserved network structure. In addition to estimating a parameter for each reporter that is related to their tendency of over- or under-reporting relationships, the model explicitly incorporates a term for ‘mutuality’, the tendency to report ties in both directions involving the same alter. Our model’s algorithmic implementation is based on variational inference, which makes it efficient and scalable to large systems. We apply our model to data from a Nicaraguan community collected with a roster-based design and 75 Indian villages collected with a name-generator design. We observe strong evidence of ‘mutuality’ in both datasets, and find that this value varies by relationship type. Consequently, our model estimates networks with reciprocity values that are substantially different than those resulting from standard deterministic aggregation approaches, demonstrating the need to consider such issues when gathering, constructing, and analysing survey-based network data.

A reinforcement learning approach to explore the role of social expectations in altruistic behavior

While altruism has been studied from a variety of standpoints, none of them has proven sufficient to explain the richness of nuances detected in experimentally observed altruistic behavior. On the other hand, the recent success of behavioral economics in linking expectation formation to key behaviors in complex societies hints to social expectations having a key role in the emergence of altruism. This paper proposes an agent-based model based upon the Bush–Mosteller reinforcement learning algorithm in which agents, subject to stimuli derived from empirical and normative expectations, update their aspirations (and, consequently, their future cooperative behavior) after playing successive rounds of the Dictator Game. The results of the model are compared with experimental results. Such comparison suggests that a stimuli model based on empirical and normative expectations, such as the one presented in this work, has considerable potential for capturing the cognitive-behavioral processes that shape decision-making in contexts where cooperative behavior is relevant.

‘Bending’ against straightening devices: queer lived experiences of sexuality and sexual health in Bangladesh

BackgroundDespite global data around increased health risks among sexual and gender diverse populations, lived experiences of young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and others (LGBTQ+) people are often ignored in mainstream health research. This is particularly evident in countries such as Bangladesh where the rights of sexual minorities are not recognised. This article looks at queer lived experiences of sexuality and sexual health within such a context. We use the phenomenological framework of heteronormative ‘straightening devices’ – mechanisms working to direct people towards heterosexuality, gender conformity, and procreative marriage – to identify ‘invisible’ structures upholding normative sexual behaviours and see how young people in Bangladesh navigate these in their everyday lives.MethodsThis article is based on qualitative data collected in Dhaka, Bangladesh over nine months in 2019 as part of the first author’s doctoral research. Using thematic analysis, we draw on experiences of normative sexual expectations from biographical in-depth interviews with 14 purposively sampled LGBTQ + individuals aged 18 to 24.ResultsRespondents identified heteronormative expectations around gender norms of traditional behaviour and presentation for men and women as well as parental expectations of compulsory heterosexuality through marriage. These straightening devices existed at multiple levels, including individual, interpersonal, community, and societal. The four main themes around straightening devices include marriage norms for women; harassment of feminine-presenting bodies in public spaces; heteronormative healthcare; and consequences of not embodying heteronormativity.ConclusionOur study highlighted young people’s everyday experiences of having to ‘bend’ to – and against – heteronormative straightening devices at home, in public spaces, and within institutions such as healthcare in Bangladesh. The exploration of queer experiences provides new insights into context-specific ways in which sexual and gender diverse people understand themselves. Further research using the framework of straightening devices can help public health professionals to identify more ‘barriers’ confronted by sexual and gender diverse young people.

Nothing about collective irrationalities makes sense except in the light of cooperation

ABSTRACT To secure cooperative opportunities people align their beliefs with the normative expectations of their social environment. These expectations are continuously managed by interactive reasoning, a process that results in dynamical pools of reasons. When people are more concerned about their social standing and reputation than truth, pools of reasons give rise to collective irrationalities. They determine what people should believe if they want to be known as a reliable group member. This account has implications for our understanding of human irrationality and how to deal with it.

Data journalism in Spain and Austria: features, organizational structure, limitations, and future perspectives

This paper makes an important contribution to comparative research by examining data journalism in Spain and Austria. This paper examines the practice of data journalism from a triple perspective: (a) the common features of day-to-day work, (b) the organizational structure and the role of the teams in newsrooms, and (c) the obstacles to and the future of data-driven reporting. Results from content analysis of data-driven news stories in El país and Der standard (N = 136) show differences and similarities in the covered topics, sources, narrative style, visualizations, interactive functions, and levels of transparency. Interestingly, only 36.8% of the analyzed news stories correspond to the normative expectations of transparency by incorporating both sources and methodological details. While the Spanish newspaper shows significantly higher levels of transparency compared with the Austrian newspaper, both newspapers perform very similarly when it comes to providing access to raw data, which was the case in only every fifth news story analyzed. Findings from focused interviews with the heads of data journalism teams deliver interesting insights into specific challenges that each news outlet is facing when creating day-to-day data-driven news stories. This research confirms the relevance that data journalism has achieved in countries such as Spain and demonstrates the effort of journalists in countries without access to information and transparency laws to create data-driven stories.

Exploring the syncretic dynamics involved in dyadic business–NGO partnerships

AbstractThis paper articulates a framework that clarifies (hitherto unexplored) aspects of the dynamics involved in dyadic partnerships between businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). At its core lies the proposition that businesses and NGOs operate with heterogeneous idea systems that are institutionalized in the definition of their organizational identities, missions and values statements and theoretically conceived of as institutional logics, worldviews, paradigms and cultures. The meeting of these idea systems is subject to processes of ‘syncretism’ that critically influence the potential of business–NGO partnerships to meet the normative expectations placed on them. The ‘business in society’ literature has however remained relatively inexplicit in terms of explaining what these processes might be. Drawing therefore on the literature on syncretism and the precepts of analogical reasoning, this study derives four main syncretic processes that determine the valence of business–NGO partnerships towards either congruity or dissent: borrowing, blending, bridging and breaking. While there is a potential for negative outcomes stemming from the first two processes, and in the fourth, bridging is highlighted as a promising, yet demanding, syncretic way for eliminating fundamental tensions between disparate idea systems. The article concludes with a research agenda, together with an outline of theoretical implications.

Social Reproduction is not a Fairy Tale: A Conversation Between Axel Honneth, Silvia Federici, and Nancy Fraser

ABSTRACT This article establishes a dialogue between the philosopher Axel Honneth and the feminist scholars Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser. The aim is to emphasize the limits of Honneth’s philosophical reflections on the normative dimension of the family developed in Freedom’s Right. First, I present his ideas on how a normative expectation of social freedom permeates familial relations. According to him, after women entered the labour market, a normative notion of symmetrical participation in the family was produced. I aim to defend here that, whether normative or not, this idea of family is not only limited but also false, since it does not consider the dilemmas of social reproduction whose consequences contradict social freedom. Next, I develop Federici’s and Fraser’s analyses of how families have always faced conflicts concerning the requirements of social reproduction and have produced diverse forms of subjugation that go against the very idea of the family as an unquestioned sphere of freedom. It is necessary to analyse how families produce new forms of subjugation to transform familial relations into truly possible ways of being socially free – and this requires making visible some figures who structure the family, such as nannies, friends and grandparents.

FEELING POST-MORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY: ETSY SELLERS’ MOURNING LISTINGS

Etsy sellers employ such terms as ‘touching’ to describe vintage post-mortem and mourning photographs. In this article, I provide an analysis of the ways sellers produce feelings and encourage buyers to connect with earlier sentiments around mourning. Sellers digitally reproduce antiquarian photographs and contemporary props, incorporate framing information, and suggest how items physically and emotionally feel. I argue that sellers use these practices to provide viewers with emotional experiences of mourning and what has been described as ‘feeling photography.’ As Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu note in their feminist and queer anthology on the subject, feeling photography stimulates dismay and sympathy when seeing violent images and mourning when viewing portraits of deceased intimates. As part of these processes, Etsy sellers reference textured objects to connect buyers to items and feelings. I thus cite Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s and other scholars’ considerations of textures and feelings, Roland Barthes’s proposal for how death and mourning are experienced through photography, and analyses of nineteenth-century photographs. My feminist and queer reading demonstrates how sellers support normative expectations about the heightened mourning of children, displace contemporary inequities by focusing on earlier losses, and (often unintentionally) render such less traditional identities as the queer child.

Communal expectations conflict with autonomy motives: The western drive for autonomy shapes women's negative responses to positive gender stereotypes.

Western culture idealizes an autonomous self-a self that strives for independence and freedom from the influence and control of others. We explored how the value placed on autonomy in Western culture intersects with the normative trait expectations experienced by men and women. While trait expectations placed on men (i.e., to be confident and assertive) affirm an autonomous sense of self, trait expectations placed on women (i.e., to be caring and understanding) conflict with an autonomous sense of self. We theorized that this conflict contributes to women's resentment toward positive gender stereotypes that emphasize women's interdependent qualities. Six preregistered studies (N = 2,094) demonstrated that U.S. women experienced more anger in response to positive-gendered trait expectations and less motivation to comply with them compared to U.S. men. We found that these effects were partially attributable to stereotypically feminine communal expectations affirming autonomy less than stereotypically masculine agentic expectations. Cross-cultural comparisons between the U.S. (a Western context) and India (a non-Western context) further indicated that the conflict between communal expectations placed on women and Western prioritization of autonomy contributes to U.S. women's anger toward positive gender stereotypes: Although traits expected of women in both the U.S. and India oriented women away from feeling autonomous more than traits expected of men, this diminished sense of being autonomous only elicited anger in a U.S. context. For Western societies, findings illuminate the uniquely frustrating nature of stereotyped expectations that demand interdependence and thus the unequal psychological burden placed on those who must contend with them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Men’s narratives of gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: Oppressor and oppressed

This article explores men’s narratives as perpetrators of gender-based violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there was a surge in gender-based violence during the pandemic, femicide and gender-based violence were a problem in South Africa even before the pandemic. Despite research indicating that men are statistically the perpetrators of GBV, there is a paucity of research on engaging men in South Africa. We wanted to understand the context in which GBV took place during a national disaster, to inform GBV prevention strategies. The study therefore aimed to explore men’s narratives of GBV during COVID-19 and the professionals working with the men to include the views of perpetrators in GBV policy and practice. A qualitative case study design was employed, and postcolonial feminism was used as the theoretical framework. The target population consists of men who have committed GBV, social workers, community workers and police. Eleven men who committed acts of GBV during the pandemic were interviewed, as well as 15 social workers and police officers who work in three rural regions in the Western Cape, South Africa. The results show that the participants were perpetrators of GBV, but that they returned to the same relationship after having been arrested for GBV. There was a lack of resources for perpetrators of GBV during the pandemic. The findings also reveal men’s normative role expectations and their positionality during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the legacy of racialized oppression persists in rural communities. The implications are that GBV prevention should consider the postcolonial context of men who are violent.

The Association Between Socioeconomic Status and Lifetime Fertility for Men and Women in South Korea: Is There a Gender Difference?

Abstract: This study seeks to examine the association between socioeconomic status of men and women and their lifetime fertility or childlessness. Declining fertility is a concern for many industrialized economies and childlessness is an important phenomenon that contributes to low fertility rates. This study used data from 4,705 of the over 10,000 people in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), Wave 1 collected in 2006, a nationally representative sample of people aged 45 and over in South Korea. This sample of middle-aged individuals provides information about lifetime fertility of men and women of South Korea, including those who have never been married. Results from logistic regression analyses showed that, for men, education, employment, and income were significantly positively associated having a child/children, whereas no significant association was found among women. The findings imply that in South Korea, men who have difficulty bearing the normative expectation of financial responsibility of fatherhood tend not to have children.

Managing Interdisciplinarity in Urban Planning Research

In contemporary research, interdisciplinarity is a common condition. This is especially true for urban planning where the need to leverage fast-evolving technology, emerging trends in social habits and globalization are challenging planners.Interdisciplinarity is often stated, and almost always expected. But only seldom is clear what it is really expected from it. Even if the term has a common meaning easy to be understood by all people, as happens with quality, it is often hard to define it in terms of normative expectations. Another aspect of interdisciplinarity is that, following the research phase, a teaching and application phase is frequently present. And is in this phase that issues arise. These issues should be reconducted to the original research but, being it interdisciplinary, there is a probability that the right knowledge domain is missed: a problem arising from technology maybe should be analysed also in urban design to be really solved.Is then important to create positive, effective, feedback to return these issues to the right research domain from the field and from the classroom. In addition, a trending approach is growing to move from interdisciplinarity to trans-disciplinarity, working with the stakeholders. In this paper, the most common and recent best practices are explored and formal definitions and constraints are provided to clarify both the interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches with a special focus on urban planning.

Knowing What You’ve Got Once It’s Gone: Identifying Familial Norms and Values through the Lens of (Sibling) Bereavement

Following the death of a sibling, life as it was known and expected to be lived is permanently and irrevocably set on a different trajectory. Surviving siblings are left to consider all that they have lost beyond the individual who died. Using data from a qualitative study exploring experiences of sibling bereavement over the life course, this article presents a set of assumptions that people had regarding their imagined but unliveable futures. In doing so, it outlines how these ideas contribute to a currently under-developed understanding of normative expectations of the adult sibling relationship, as well as wider familial norms and values. As such, this article will demonstrate that death can actually reveal much about living relationships. It will conclude that bereavement research has much to offer the sociologies of family, relationships and personal life, as an alternative lens through which to learn more about familial norms and values.

Definitions and measures of corporate reputation in accounting and management: commonalities, differences, and future research

This study reviews and compares the definitions and measurements of ‘corporate reputation’ used in 173 studies published in seven top-tier accounting and management journals between 1980 and 2020. Accounting scholars frequently fail to define ‘reputation,’ and if they do, definitions vary considerably between the accounting and management fields. We further find that measures of reputation do not fit well with its definition. The accounting literature often employs secondary financial measures, which poorly reflect stakeholders’ reputation assessments. We develop a conceptual framework to better classify prior research and identify appropriate measures of reputation that match the chosen definition. We also suggest a number of further research opportunities: Accounting scholars may focus more on (a) stakeholders’ subjective nonfinancial assessments; (b) the emotional appeal of companies and its relationship with competence and integrity assessments; (c) the role of stakeholders’ normative expectations and (d) explicitly consider a multi-stakeholder perspective, where corporations have multiple reputations rather than one.

Ambition as a Legal Concept in the Paris Agreement and Climate Litigation: Some Reflections

“Ambition” and its variants “progression” and “highest possible ambition” are cornerstones of the Paris Agreement and its 2/1.5 degrees C global warming goals, while ambition is at best implicit in the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Even though only a normative expectation in a system of self-assessment, under the Paris Agreement ambition serves as a yardstick for judging and discussing the adequacy of the NDCs. However, the content and meaning of “ambition” are far from being agreed upon and the applicability of the reformulated principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities does not provide clear answers. In these circumstances, the article looks for guidance from national court decisions that interpret, apply or consider the notion of ambition “on the ground”. These decisions address a number of elements of ambition. They may encourage more ambitious national action. However, they are mostly not specific enough to draw robust conclusions from them regarding concrete questions of application.

IVF So White, So Medical: Digital Normativity and Algorithm Bias in Infertility on Instagram

Increasingly, women experiencing infertility are turning online to social media platforms, like Instagram, to engage with a support network and foster empathy. However, Instagram is also noted for its augmentation of White, cis, and heteronormative femininity through a process of silencing and minoritizing alternative, non-White voices. Through an inductive analysis of the most frequently used infertility hashtags, we collected and analyzed 252 Instagram posts to investigate how these algorithmic practices may socially construct the idealized IVF experience through communicating normative expectations. We identify predominant patterns of use that reinforce stratification within infertility treatments as primarily accessible to White women and best handled through expensive, expert medical procedures. Ultimately, we argue for increased attention to how algorithms may communicatively constitute and socially construct existing health disparities.

Attitudes and opportunities: comparing climate change adaptation intentions and decisions of agricultural producers in Shaanxi, China, and British Columbia, Canada.

Climate change poses a major challenge for agricultural producers. There are a variety of adaptation strategies producers can use to enhance their resilience to the changing climate. The theory of planned behavior is applied as a framework to compare the adaptation intentions and choices of producers in Cariboo and Okanagan regions of the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, and Baoji and Xi'an city prefectures of Shaanxi (SX) province, China. In BC, producers are more likely to explore the use of new crop varieties, and BC producers also seem to have a stronger intention to invest in irrigation efficiency. In contrast, producers in SX are far more likely to use online marketing methods to connect directly with consumers. Based on transcripts from a set of focus groups, community meetings, and interviews, differences in attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control between SX and BC producers are identified that may contribute to their different adaptation choices. Multiple barriers to adaptation existed in both areas. Limited technical knowledge and doubts about adaptation effectiveness were more serious in BC, while limited support from local government and normative expectations were notable in SX. Education, targeted research, and public investments in irrigation and marketing may contribute to addressing some of these differences, improving the resilience of agricultural climate adaptation in both provinces.

Taking experiences of disrespectful misrecognition in blended workgroups seriously

ABSTRACT This article explores how experienced relational quality in blended workgroups consisting of permanent and temporary members is affected by temporary members’ normative expectations for the relationship. We draw on Axel Honneth’s four primary forms of recognition to illuminate the foundation of normative expectations. This focus on temporary members’ normative expectations contrasts with existing research in blended workgroups, focusing predominantly on the behavior of permanent members towards temporary ones. We draw on illustrative examples from a qualitative study of first – and third-year nursing students’ experiences during their internships at somatic hospitals. First – and third-year students report how they experience a deviation from their normative expectations as a threat to their positive self-image. In conclusion, we propose that the normative expectations characterizing the relationship between nursing students and permanent nurses can be described based on three forms of recognition:’ visibility,’ ‘respect,’ and ‘esteem.’