Journal of Social Issues最新文献

Students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds can experience stigma in undergraduate educational settings but little research on this topic has been conducted at the PhD level. Lower-SES PhD students may feel lower levels of social integration as they experience incidents of interpersonal disconnection from others inside and outside of academia. Interpersonal disconnection may be a mechanism by which lower-SES leads to a lower sense of social integration. In this prospective study of first-year PhD students at three North American universities (N = 608), we assessed students’ perceived social integration and their interpersonal perceptions inside and outside of academia 2–8 times throughout their first year of graduate school. Relative to higher-SES students, lower-SES students perceived lower levels of social integration. They had difficulty making academic friends, felt dissimilar to their academic peers, and perceived a lack of understanding about their work in graduate school from non-academic families and friends. They also lost non-academic social ties. These interpersonal disconnections prospectively mediated the association between lower SES and lower levels of perceived social integration. Lower-SES PhD students are at risk of impaired interpersonal relationships. Institutional policies to promote social connections among PhD students may help lower-SES students integrate into academia.

Racism from one's partner is a highly sensitive phenomenon that has received little research attention. The current research introduces the concept of “intimate racism” to refer to racism from close others. The manifestation of intimate racism in intercultural romantic relationships was explored with a sample of 92 racialized minorities who were currently, or previously, in an intercultural relationship. An online survey enquired about the experience of racism from their partner, and responses were coded and analyzed using thematic content analysis. More than 50 different manifestations of intimate racism emerged and these were grouped into eight categories: explicit racism, microinsults, microinvalidations, positive stereotypes, racial fetishization, partner abuse, defensiveness, and others. Co-occurrence analyses revealed links between intimate racism with negative, neutral and positive experiences, which were connected to participants’ responses to racism (e.g., confronting, disengaging) and to stressful identity experiences. The present work opens a new field of study to examine intimate racism and its implications.

This paper seeks to develop and apply a simple yardstick based on remaining life expectancy to assess whether specific health policies unfairly discriminate against people on the basis of their age. This reveals that the COVID-19 vaccine prioritization policies of several countries have discriminated against older people. Conversely, the exclusion of older people from COVID-19 vaccine testing is shown to be non-discriminatory, as is some degree of age prioritization for limited acute COVID-19 care. Age discrimination in vaccine prioritization is shown to be embedded in wider ageist attitudes in health policy, which give the lives of older people a lower social value than the lives of people at younger ages.

Immigrant and migrant well-being have been widely studied, but the knowledge gained from immigrant adaptation and well-being has mostly focused on findings from more developed countries, which may diverge from the situation in Asia. East-Asian countries have strong roots in Confucian culture, which celebrates cultural homogeneity, and societies are thus conservative when it comes to welcoming immigrants. Southeast Asian countries are major migrant-sending areas but have now also become important manufacturing centers with dynamic migrant and immigrant groups. In this special issue, we seek to push forward knowledge about the myth of immigrant and migrant adaptation and well-being among both Asian areas and Asian immigrants in North America. In this introductory article, we first discuss a few gaps in research on migration and immigration in Asia, including migration of the same ethnicity group across different political systems in the Asian context, migration and its influence on family and well-being between and among Southeast Asian countries, as well as Asian immigrants in North America. We then introduce the various contributions to this special issue. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications.

A cross-national representative survey in Canada and the U.S. examined ageism toward older individuals during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, including ageist consumption stereotypes and perceptions of older people's competence and warmth. We also investigated predictors of ageism, including economic and health threat, social dominance orientation, individualism and collectivism, social distancing beliefs, and demographics. In both countries, younger adults were more likely to hold ageist consumption stereotypes, demonstrating intergenerational conflict about the resources being used by older people. Similarly, young adults provided older people with the lowest competence and warmth scores, though adults of all ages rated older individuals as more warm than competent. Particularly among younger individuals, beliefs about group-based dominance hierarchies, the importance of competition, and the costs of social distancing predicted greater endorsement, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted lower endorsement of ageist consumption stereotypes. Support for group-based inequality predicted lower perceived competence and warmth of older individuals, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted higher perceived competence and warmth of older individuals. Implications for policies and practices to reduce intergenerational conflict and ageist perceptions of older individuals are discussed.

The present research explored female-perpetrated stranger sexual harassment of young male victims. Across two studies, male participants aged 16–23 reported that they had experienced a range of unwanted sexual attention from unknown female perpetrators, including both in-person harassment (e.g., seductive behavior and catcalls, unwanted sexual touching) and online harassment (e.g., unsolicited sexual text messages and images, requests for nude self photos). Participants reported that in-person sexual harassment started as early as 9–12 years of age and online harassment began between 12–14 years of age. Open-ended descriptions of these early events revealed troubling narratives of non-consensual sexual touching, forcibly removed clothing, groping, aggression, and being followed, with much of it committed by adult women. Participants recounted being asked, in adolescence, to send nude photos and receiving persistent sexual demands, often from older women. In addition, participants reported uncertainty with gender role expectations, believing that they were supposed to enjoy sexual attention but in reality finding it disturbing and unpleasant. Practical implications, policy recommendations, and future directions are discussed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) identified +65 individuals as one of the most vulnerable populations in the current pandemic. Previous research has shown a robust association between ageism and derogatory attitudes and behaviors targeting older people. We proposed that reluctance of people under age 65 to endorse the policies that benefit older adults can be further explained by their adherence to social Darwinism. We tested a mediation model to examine whether social Darwinism would predict support for policies directly and indirectly through the endorsement of ageist attitudes. We conducted two correlational studies in Turkey (Study 1; N = 1261) and the United States (Study 2; N = 210). In Study 1, we collected data through social media and messaging platforms in April 2020. In Study 2, participants were recruited via Prolific Academic in May 2020. In both studies, we found that adherence to social Darwinist beliefs negatively predicted support for policies. We also found that this association was positively mediated by ageist attitudes. Overall, our research contributes to the scholarly effort to identify the social-psychological barriers to public support for legal initiatives aimed to secure a healthy and productive future for older people.

The current study investigates older adults’ perceptions of ageism in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using tenets of Stereotype Embodiment Theory and the Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes Map framework, we sought to (a) examine whether older adults experienced ageism as self-relevant during the pandemic and (b) understand whether older adults experienced certain media messages and interpersonal behaviors during the pandemic and interpreted them as being motivated by potentialpaternalistic age stereotypes. Older adults aged 65 and older recruited from the community (n = 73) participated in a semi-structured interview about their perspectives on ageism toward older adults during the pandemic. Participants also completed an online survey about their experiences with a range of messages and interpersonal behaviors throughout the pandemic. We thematically analyzed interview data and identified three primary themes: self-relevance of age stereotypes; awareness of negative, overgeneralized portrayals of older adults; and defenses against self-relevance of age stereotypes. Survey responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequency counts and suggest that participants attributed messages and behaviors potentially imbued with paternalistic ageism as motivated primarily by care and concern for older adults. The findings add to the field's understanding of older adults’ experiences and perceptions of ageism in the media and in interpersonal behaviors in the context of COVID-19.

Initial evidence suggests that rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) increased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, much of the prevalence research has focused on survivors’ experiences of IPV during the initial lockdown period from March to June 2020. The current study adds to this initial research by centering the experience of a domestic violence agency located in the United States, 3-months prior to, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown. The results suggest a similar pattern across service utilization (e.g., total clients served, calls, safe house capacity) and survivor demographics (e.g., race/ethnicity, cisgender women and men), with an initial decrease in service utilization from pre-lockdown to lockdown and an increase, surpassing pre-lockdown, post-lockdown. The only deviations from this pattern of service utilization were for sexual minority individuals, whose service utilization continued to decline post-lockdown and Asian American/Pacific Islander and trans/gender-nonbinary survivors who rarely utilized services across the time period. Additionally, the domestic violence agency relied heavily on their existing finances, well-rounded staff training, and staff wellbeing throughout the pandemic. The unique challenges that COVID-19 provided demanded flexibility, increased technological utilization, and additional funding particularly for safe housing. Implications for future research, intervention, and policy change are provided below.

Stigmatized individuals often feel threatened by negative stereotypes about their group. Previous research showed that concerns about being negatively stereotyped (i.e., social identity threat) have detrimental effects on performance in the stereotyped domain. Little research has focused on interpersonal consequences of negative stereotypes, despite their essential role for integration of stigmatized groups like immigrants. The current work examines the relations of social identity threat with sense of belonging and social approach motivation in immigrant university students, and the moderating effect of ethnic and national identity. Two studies with immigrant university students in Norway (total sample N = 252) showed that concerns about being negatively stereotyped at university were negatively associated with immigrant students’ sense of belonging to university which in turn related to lower social approach motivation toward other students. Further, social approach motivation predicted students’ behavioral intentions to approach social events. There was also first evidence for a moderating effect of ethnic and national identity on the relationship between social identity threat and sense of belonging. Practical implications for immigrants’ societal and educational integration are discussed.