Siegwart Lindenberg

The Spreading of Disorder

Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass, or even steal? A thesis known as the broken windows theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to deteriorate. For a city government, this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not clear what constitutes disorder and what may make it spread. We generated hypotheses about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments. We found that, when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.

Bullying and victimization in elementary schools : A comparison of bullies, victims, bully/victims, and uninvolved preadolescents

Research on bullying and victimization largely rests on univariate analyses and on reports from a single informant. Researchers may thus know too little about the simultaneous effects of various independent and dependent variables, and their research may be biased by shared method variance. The database for this Dutch study was large (N = 1,065) and rich enough to allow multivariate analysis and multi-source information. In addition, the effect of familial vulnerability for internalizing and externalizing disorders was studied. Gender, aggressiveness, isolation, and dislikability were most strongly related to bullying and victimization. Among the many findings that deviated from or enhanced the univariate knowledge base were that not only victims and bully/victims but bullies as well were disliked and that parenting was unrelated to bullying and victimization once other factors were controlled.

Intrinsic motivation in a new light

Economics is solidly based on the workings of incentives. Extra rewards will increase and extra costs will decrease the frequency of a particular type of behavior. In sociology, Weber had pointed to a kind of behavior that was presumably not steered by incentives: value-rational behavior, found in religions and strong reasoned convictions. Because of an increasing rationalization of the world, Weber saw this kind of value-rational behavior slowly displaced by what he called goal-rational (zweckrational) behavior. Though often a popular topic of discussion, the displacement of value-rational by goal-rational behavior had never led to a viable research program within sociology. Instead, it was psychologists who had discovered a related issue of ‘intrinsic’ versus ‘extrinsic’ motivation. For intrinsically motivated behavior, there is no apparent reward but the behavior itself. The psychologists had been able to forge a booming program over many years. On this basis, Frey (1997) reintroduced the issue back into the social sciences which, in turn, drew attention to the work of these psychologists. Within psychology, the research by Deci (1971) and Lepper et al. (1973) was a pioneering stab at behaviorist theory by pointing to situations in which rewards decrease rather than increase the frequency of behavior. This work had spawned a thriving research paradigm (Deci and Ryan 1985)1 and a host of studies. Briefly, the findings converge to the following. Expected tangible rewards tend to reduce intrinsic motivation whereas praise and other posi-

Empirical test of bullies' status goals: assessing direct goals, aggression, and prestige

The literature suggests that status goals are one of the driving motivations behind bullying behavior, yet this conjecture has rarely if ever been examined empirically. This study assessed status goals in three ways, using dyadic network analysis to analyze the relations and goals among 10-11 and 14-15 year olds in 22 school classes (N boys=225; N girls=277). As a validation bullies were contrasted with victims. Bullies had direct status goals (measured with the Interpersonal Goal Inventory for Children) and showed dominance as measured with proactive aggression. Moreover, as predicted from a goal perspective, bullying behavior was related to prestige in terms of perceived popularity. In contrast, victims lacked status goals, were only reactively aggressive, and low on prestige. That being popular is not the same as being liked could be shown by the fact that bullies were just as rejected as victims by their classmates. Eighth-grade bullies had more direct status goals than fourth-grade bullies, possibly indicating that striving for the popularity component of status increases in early adolescence.

SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING AND SOCIAL PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS

Recent reviews of scientific work on subjective well-being (SWB) reveal disagreements in conceptualization, measurement, and explanation of the concept. We propose Social Production Function theory as a framework to resolve them. Social Production Function (SPF) theory integrates strengths of relevant psychological theories and economic consumer/household production theories, without their limitations (namely, tradeoffs between satisfaction of different needs are not in the first, and goals or needs are not in the second). SPF theory identifies two ultimate goals that all humans seek to optimize (physical well-being and social well-being) and five instrumental goals by which they are achieved (stimulation, comfort, status, behavioural confirmation, affection). The core notion of SPF theory is that people choose and substitute instrumental goals so as to optimize the production of their well-being, subject to constraints in available means of production. SPF theory guides research measurement and explanatory models, and it integrates features of contemporary subjective well-being theories.

Beyond the Class Norm: Bullying Behavior of Popular Adolescents and its Relation to Peer Acceptance and Rejection

This study examined to what extent bullying behavior of popular adolescents is responsible for whether bullying is more or less likely to be accepted or rejected by peers (popularity-norm effect) rather than the behavior of all peers (class norm). Specifically, the mean level of bullying by the whole class (class norm) was split into behavior of popular adolescents (popularity-norm) and behavior of non-popular adolescents (non-popularity-norm), and examined in its interaction with individual bullying on peer acceptance and peer rejection. The data stem from a peer-nominations subsample of TRAILS, a large population-based sample of adolescent boys and girls (N = 3312). The findings of multilevel regression analyses demonstrated that the negative impact of individual bullying on peer acceptance and the positive impact on peer rejection were particularly weakened by bullying by popular adolescents. These results place the class-norm effects found in previous person-group dissimilarity studies in a different light, suggesting that particularly bullying by popular adolescents is related to the social status attached to bullying.

Which social needs are important for subjective well-being? What happens to them with aging?

In this study the authors investigated how satisfaction levels of affection, behavioral confirmation, and status, as three human social needs, relate to age, physical loss, and subjective well-being. Results (N=883, aged 65 to 98 years) revealed that (a) affection was relatively high and status was relatively low in all age and loss groups; behavioral confirmation showed negative age and loss effects but was better predicted by loss; (b) the three needs relate differentially to indicators of subjective well-being: affection and behavioral confirmation relate positively to life satisfaction; status and behavioral confirmation relate positively to positive affect and negatively to negative affect. It is concluded that the need for behavioral confirmation is more difficult to satisfy with high physical loss, but none of the three social needs becomes less important with advancing age.

Social Production Functions, Deficits, and Social Revolutions: Prerevolutionary France and Russia

Two issues are unresolved for a theory of social revolution: (1) Under what circumstances is it likely that different groups in a society become destabilized within a short period of time? (2) Given the potential for free ride and the high risks of participation, how is rebellious action possible? While written within the context of rational choice theory, the article departs from conventional rational choice theories in major ways. In particular, the new theory emphasizes the usefulness of regarding individual actors as producers subject to framing effects. By attending to the consequences of governmental actions for individuals, the theory supplies a new interpretation of what happened in prerevolutionary France and Russia.

How to understand and improve older people’s self-management of wellbeing

This paper addresses the question of how older people can be supported to actively self-manage their own process of ageing such that overall wellbeing is achieved and maintained for as long as possible. Starting from a resource-based approach, a new theory of self-management of wellbeing (SMW theory) is proposed, and it is shown how it can be used as a basis for the design of self-management interventions for ageing successfully. The main aspects of the theory, i.e. six key self-management abilities and the core dimensions of wellbeing, are presented as well as the theory-based ‘blueprint’ for the design of interventions. Empirical results of two intervention studies are briefly presented and show that the SMW theory may be a useful tool for the design and evaluation of interventions for successful ageing.

Same-Gender and Cross-Gender Peer Acceptance and Peer Rejection and Their Relation to Bullying and Helping Among Preadolescents: Comparing Predictions From Gender-Homophily and Goal-Framing Approaches

The relation between bullying and helping and same-gender and cross-gender peer acceptance and peer rejection was examined in a sample of preadolescents aged 11 and 12 years (N=1,065). The authors tested predictions from a gender-homophily approach vs. predictions from a goal-framing approach in which acceptance and rejection are seen as being generated by approach and avoidance goals, respectively. For preadolescents, both approaches predicted a central role for gender, but the gender-homophily approach predicted symmetrical effects for acceptance and rejection, whereas the goal-framing approach predicted strong asymmetries. The data supported the goal-framing approach. The most important findings were that for preadolescents, acceptance is much more frequent and much more gendered than rejection; the absolute impact of helping on acceptance is much larger than that of bullying (and vice versa for rejection); for acceptance, there is a prototypicality effect (i.e., boys accept bullying girls better than nonbullying girls, and girls accept helping boys better than nonhelping boys); and for acceptance, there is a cross-gender ignorance effect (i.e., boys ignore helping in girls, and girls ignore bullying in boys).