Socioeconomic status is associated with health disparities, but underlying psychosocial mechanisms have not been fully identified. Dispositional optimism may be a psychosocial process linking socioeconomic status with health. We hypothesized that lower optimism would be associated with greater social disadvantage and poorer social mobility. We also investigated whether life satisfaction and pos...

A growing number of international relations scholars argue that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) promote peace. Existing approaches emphasize IGO membership as an important causal attribute of individual states, much like economic development and regime type. The authors draw up on social network analysis, arguing that conflicts between states are also shaped by relative positions of soci...

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are continuing to grow their share of total vehicle sales as consumers, companies, and governments prioritize automotive electrification. Types EVs include hybrid electric, plug-in battery fuel cell vehicles. Today, commonly use an ac permanent magnet or induction motor. A traction inverter is a critical drivetrain element required convert the dc current available from p...

Over the last two decades most psychological and neuropsychological research into autism has focused on individuals with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism (HFA), rather than on individuals with lowfunctioning autism (LFA) or what is termed autistic disorder in the Diagnostic and Stastical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSMIV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The cor...

This paper advances an "information goods" theory that explains prestige processes as an emergent product of psychological adaptations that evolved to improve the quality of information acquired via cultural transmission. Natural selection favored social learners who could evaluate potential models and copy the most successful among them. In order to improve the fidelity and comprehensiveness o...

In this study, we investigated the role of student characteristics and behaviors in a longitudinal study over a 50-year timespan (using a large U.S. representative sample of high school students). We addressed the question of whether behaviors in school have any long-lasting effects for one's later life. Specifically, we investigated the role of being a responsible student, interest in school, ...

In this paper we argue that an understanding of the role of sociolinguistic norms in the spread of sound change needs to be able to model competing norms, and the indexical meanings of variants that drive them. Our argument is based on an analysis of /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. (aw) is above the level of awareness, to the point that it is often used to represent lo...