https://www.gradpsychblog.org/my-path-to-a-career-in-ux-research/#.W4w3vOhKjb0

https://www.gradpsychblog.org/my-path-to-a-career-in-ux-research/#.W4w3vOhKjb0

Measurement Invariance Sources

https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~hemken/MPlus/Basics/Grouped/Grouped_Analysis.html#grouped-confirmatory-factor-analysis

http://joophox.net/publist/CecklistMeasInv.pdf

http://www.statmodel.com/download/Topic%201.pdf

http://www.statmodel.com/discussion/messages/9/703.html?1527896840

Steenkamp, J. B. E., & Baumgartner, H. (1998). Assessing measurement invariance in cross-national consumer research. Journal of consumer research, 25(1), 78-90.

PERFECT MPLUS SYNTAX EXPLAINED FOR Measurement Invariance:
http://comm.eval.org/HigherLogic/System/DownloadDocumentFile.ashx?DocumentFileKey=63758fed-a490-43f2-8862-2de0217a08b8

I think honor concerns equates to concern for good reputation, and people strive to form the kind of reputation that their social group values (Barclay, 2015; Cottrell, Neuberg & Li, 2007).  People can form impressions of themselves that is inconsistent with what they believe in, especially if they think that it would reduce their chances to be seen as cooperators in that group, if they will be excluded, or if they will be harmed (e.g., if you are non-religious, you can seem like a religious person around religious people or hide any signs that may give away your true beliefs, and how much a person would be motivated to hide their true belief/values would depend on the costs). Also self-concepts are connected to reputations, and self-concepts can change to become more in line with a person's social image in time. There is evidence that certain aspects of morality are internalized, such as lying or harming someone. Many murderers (unless they are psychopaths) feel extreme anxiety even when noone knows that they killed a person. Over time, with successful impression management, their anxiety may reduce. People often are concerned with how others perceive them even when no immediate or future outcomes depend on the impressions they make (Leary & Kowalski, 1990). I am rambling, based on this research, I think certain aspects of honor concerns would be observed in completely private contexts too.

https://www.psychometrica.de/effect_size.html AND https://www.psychometrica.de/correlation.html

https://www.psychometrica.de/effect_size.html

https://www.psychometrica.de/correlation.html

cultural phenotype and genotype

http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/whats-cultural-genotype/

A week ago I was at a workshop Rules as Genotypes in Cultural Evolution (check out the Focus Article by Elinor Ostrom that set the stage for the meeting). One major topic of discussion was what might be the cultural analog of genotype.

In biology phenotype is the observable traits and characteristics of an organism, including morphology, coloration, behavior, etc. Phenotypic traits are determined jointly by the organism’s environment and its genotype, or genetically encoded information. Multicellular organisms like us store genetic information in the DNA (although things are somewhat complicated by the possibility of epigenetic transmission of acquired traits).

The distinction between the phenotype and the genotype has been enormously productive in evolutionary biology, so folks studying human cultural evolution have proposed that we need to find cultural analogs of the genotype and phenotype. One such scheme that I find fairly coherent (I actually teach it in my class on cultural evolution) is the one formulated by Richerson and Boyd (see their Not By Genes Alone; Rob Boyd participated in the workshop and argued in favor of this view). Richerson and Boyd define culture very broadly, as socially transmitted information. The cultural phenotype is pretty clear – it is the behavioral traits of humans, understood broadly (includes collective behaviors such as dance and rituals; knowledge, philosophy, and science; tools, books, clothing, tattoos, domesticated animals, technology, etc). Unlike biological traits in most organisms, human behaviors are affected not only by genes and the environment, but also by culture. Because both genetic and cultural information is transmitted across generations, this theory is also known as the ‘dual inheritance theory.’

So what’s cultural genotype? Boyd and Richerson argue that humans had culture before there were any technological means, such as memory chips of computers or written books, to store cultural information. The only place where cultural information could be stored in prehistoric times was people’s brains. So cultural genotype is the information stored in human brains.

Fine so far, but other participants in the workshop had different views. Some objected to the idea that any information is ‘stored’ in the brain (I never figured out why, though). Others, like David Sloan Wilson, proposed very different views of cultural genotypes. Wilson, together with his graduate student Yasha Hartberg, argued that a sacred text can be thought of as a cultural genotype, because it “consists of many ‘genes’ in the form of stories, commandments, and other texts. A sacred text such as the Christian Bible is replicated with high fidelity and has a potent effect on behavior, which are two requirements of a cultural genotype.”

This view also sounds reasonable, but can cultural ‘genes’ be both neural circuits in the brain and words inked on a parchment? After all, biological genes come in only one variety, the DNA (let’s ignore viruses and prions for simplicity). This leads me to the question whether the whole idea of ‘cultural genotype’ is a useful concept.

After all, what gets transmitted is not the ‘cultural genotype,’ whatever that is, but the cultural phenotype. Dawkins’ phrase of memes jumping from brain to brain is a striking metaphor. On further thought, however, I think it is a silly, and certainly not a useful idea. We are not telepathic! The way cultural information is transmitted is by people observing the behaviors of others and then attempting to imitate them, with greater or lesser degree of success. We actually don’t even know whether the observer/learner encodes the cultural information with precisely the same configuration of neural circuits (if that’s how we store information in our brains) as the one in the brain of the person being imitated. (I believe that Richerson and Boyd made this point before me.) In fact, most likely the same behavior can be encoded by a multitude of very different circuitry configurations. Cultural evolution is Lamarckian, but the distinction between the genotype and phenotype is really useful only in a Mendelian framework.

So what really matters is the actual observed behaviors, not how they are encoded in brains. That’s a relief, because we really don’t know how information is stored in the human brain. As Rob Boyd stressed during the workshop, cultural evolution is currently in its pre-Mendelian phase. But I would argue that while it would certainly be interesting to know how brains work, this knowledge is rather academic for the scientific study of cultural evolution. Yes, we need to know about various biases affecting learning and transmission of cultural information, but psychologists are doing a pretty good job investigating such mechanisms experimentally. I am not against brain research, I am just saying that we don’t need to wait for new great insights from neuroscience to study cultural evolution productively.

In any case, in this day and age we have an alternative cultural genotype, whose physical characteristics are completely understood – digital information: books, technical manuals, audiotapes, videos, etc. Any human behaviors can be recorded and transmitted to others. You can now learn how to fix a leaky faucet or study an esoteric martial art on the Youtube.

The genotype/phenotype distinction is not a useful way to think about cultural evolution because cultural evolution is too different from genetic evolution. Cultural evolution is Lamarckian, while genetic evolution is Mendelian (but both are Darwinian). Cultural traits can be both discrete and continuous, while genetic traits are discrete. Cultural information is transmitted ‘asexually.’ Finally, in cultural evolution what ultimately matters is not what an individual person does, but what groups of people do.

Research Interests Profile in my CV

My research interests span a broad range of topics in social psychology including culture (both as phenomena to be explained as well as a causal factor of social behavior), gender, sexism and politics. During my PhD, I have developed an increasing interest in studying ‘culture’ as phenomena to be explained; that is, how certain cultural norms develop and come to be accepted by the members of a given group/society, why they change over time, and what insights they give us about human psychology. For instance, why do norms of chivalry still operate in our culture, prescribing men to act courteous and protective towards women, and women to accept such treatment from men? Why do some societies still operate with codes of honor, and retaliation and aggressive reactions to offenses are considered appropriate behavior? What are the individual-level psychological mechanisms and social conditions that contribute to the genesis and transmission of these cultural trends? And how do cultural norms are implicated in various individual and collective behavior? These are some of the questions I am passionate about finding out the answers for, and expanding our understanding of human psychology.

The Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status (BSMSS) - Barratt (2012) SES

The Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status (BSMSS)

http://socialclassoncampus.blogspot.com/2012/06/barratt-simplified-measure-of-social.html

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Indiana State University

June 14, 2012

This measure is built on the work of Hollingshead (1957, 1975) who devised a simple measure of Social Status based on marital status, retired/employed status (retired individuals used their last occupation) educational attainment, and occupational prestige.  This is a measure of social status, which is a proxy for socio-economic status.  This is not a measure of social class, which is best seen as a cultural identity.  An individual’s or their parents’ educational attainment and occupational prestige can change over their life. Social class, especially social class of origin identity, stays with each person throughout their life similar to gender identity and ethnic identity.

Two important changes have been made to the Hollingshead Four Factor measure of social status as it was transformed into the BSMSS.  First, the list of occupations has been updated based on the work of Davis, Smith, Hodge, Hakao, and Treas (1991) who calculated occupational prestige ratings from the 1989 general social survey.  Hollingshead originally had 9 occupational groups, so the 1989 data was divided into 9 groups.  To develop the dividing lines between the 9 groups the distribution of the "Prestige Score" was examined closely.  Scores ranged from 86 for Physician to 17 for Miscellaneous Food Preparation Occupations, however, below Physician there was a gap of eleven points until the next occupation of Lawyer, and 30 occupations ranked as a 74.  Clearly the "Prestige Score" would not lend itself to a readily apparent set of 9 divisions.

It was decided to use a 6 or 7 point spread for each of the 9 divisions, using judgments for the dividing line based on the fall-off, or scree, of the plotted scores.  Once the 9 divisions had been made raters were asked to identify typical, or common, occupations from within each group to use as the descriptors in the instrument.

The second change was to recognize the generational shift in social status. The BSMSS accounts for an individual's parent's educational attainment and occupational prestige and combines that with the individual's own family's educational attainment and occupational prestige.  An arbitrary weighting was given of 2:1 for Individual's family scores to parent's family scores.  Social class mobility, in the US, is a fact of life.  As with all identities growth is an aggregating process, so we all carry identities from our family of origin into our attained identity of the moment.  The choice of a 2:1 weighting recognized that the individual's current identity is the most important.

Hollingshead's original conceptualization of educational attainment has been maintained faithfully, as has his weighting of educational attainment to occupational prestige of 3:5.

The BSMSS does not produce a measure of SES in any absolute sense.  A discussion of the larger issues of SES is not the point here; suffice it to say that no classic definition of SES, or even the larger issue of social class, exists.  The score that results from this measure is ordinal only. It is sufficient for regression analysis or for creating social status groups based on the data collected.  The BSMSS is not designed to identify any individual or group as belonging to any particular social class, or socio-economic status, or social status.

Note please that assumptions about a mother’s or father’s contribution to an individual’s social class are Hollingshead’s. Stay-at-home mothers are not included in this calculation even though we know that mothers are an important influence on children.

Psychometric properties: Reliability is not an appropriate question to evaluate the BSMSS because this is not a scale.  Validity is appropriate as a question and as with all demographic questions the researcher must determine if the question does in fact reflect the question being asked.  Essentially the BSMSS provides a demographic question to help frame an understanding of the individual participants in a study. 

For permission to use the BSMSS or for a list of articles and dissertations that have used the BSMSS please contact the author at will dot barratt at indstate dot edu.  This material had originally be posted on the author's campus website and has now been moved here to in order to adapt to emerging technology and server space.

EDIT - SES is not social class

References

Davis, J., Smith, T., Hodge, R., Nakao, K., & Treas, J. (1991). Occupational prestige ratings from the 1989 general social survey. Ann Arbor MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Hollingshead, August B. (1957). Two factor index of social position. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Hollingshead, A. B. (1975). Four factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

   

This material is not available for use without permission from the author.  Permission will be freely given for research and there is a cost for commercial/business use.  Email will dot barratt at indstate dot edu with a description of your study and assurances that you have appropriate approvals for your research.  

The Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status (BSMSS)

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Circle the appropriate number for your Mother’s, your Father’s, your Spouse / Partner's, and yourlevel of school completed and occupation. If you grew up in a single parent home, circle only the score from your one parent. If you are neither married nor partnered circle only your score. If you are a full time student circle only the scores for your parents.

Level of School Completed	Mother	Father	Spouse	You
Less than 7th grade	3	3	3	3
Junior high / Middle school (9th grade)	6	6	6	6
Partial high school (10th or 11th grade)	9	9	9	9
High school graduate	12	12	12	12
Partial college (at least one year)	15	15	15	15
College education	18	18	18	18
Graduate degree	21	21	21	21

Circle the appropriate number for your Mother’s, your Father’s , your Spouse / Partner's, and youroccupation. If you grew up in a single parent home, use only the score from your parent. If you are not married or partnered circle only your score. If you are still a full-time student only circle the scores for your parents. If you are retired use your most recent occupation.

Occupation	Mother	Father	Spouse	You
Day laborer, janitor, house cleaner, farm worker, food counter sales, food preparation worker, busboy.	5	5	5	5
Garbage collector, short-order cook, cab driver, shoe sales, assembly line workers, masons, baggage porter.	10	10	10	10
Painter, skilled construction trade, sales clerk, truck driver, cook, sales counter or general office clerk.	15	15	15	15
Automobile mechanic, typist, locksmith, farmer, carpenter, receptionist, construction laborer, hairdresser.	20	20	20	20
Machinist, musician, bookkeeper, secretary, insurance sales, cabinet maker, personnel specialist, welder.	25	25	25	25
Supervisor, librarian, aircraft mechanic, artist and artisan, electrician, administrator, military enlisted personnel, buyer.	30	30	30	30
Nurse, skilled technician, medical technician, counselor, manager, police and fire personnel, financial manager, physical, occupational, speech therapist.	35	35	35	35
Mechanical, nuclear, and electrical engineer,  educational administrator, veterinarian, military officer, elementary, high school and special education teacher,	40	40	40	40
Physician, attorney, professor, chemical and aerospace engineer, judge, CEO, senior manager, public official, psychologist, pharmacist, accountant.	45	45	45	45

Level of School Completed Scoring

1	If you grew up with both parents add Mother + Father and divide by 2. If you grew up with one parent enter that score to the right.
2	If you are married or partnered add Spouse + You and divide by 2. If you live alone enter Your score to the right. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
3	Double your score from line 2. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
4	If you are a full-time student enter only your parents’ score. Add line 1 and line 3 then divide by 3 (three) for a TOTAL EDUCATION Score should be between 3 and 21

Occupation Scoring

1	If you grew up with both parents add Mother + Father and divide by 2. If you grew up with one parent enter that score to the right.
2	If you are married or partnered add Spouse + You and divide by 2. If you live alone enter Your score to the right. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
3	Double your score from line 2. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
4	If you are a full-time student enter only your parents’ score. Add line 1 and line 3 then divide by 3 (three) for TOTAL OCCUPATION Score should be between 5 and 45

TOTAL Score:

Add TOTAL EDUCATION + TOTAL OCCUPATION: Score should be between 8 and 66

This material is protected under US copyright law and international treaty.  If you would like to use this material please contact the author for permission.  Google Scholar has a list of citations for this material.

Author contact - will dot barratt at indstate dot edu