Commitment is at the core of social life. The social fabric is woven from promises and threats that are not always immediately advantageous to the parties involved. Many commitments, such as signing a contract, are fairly straightforward deals, in which both parties agree to give up certain options. Other commitments, such as the promise of life-long love or a threat of murder, are based on more intangible factors such as human emotions. In Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment, distinguished researchers from the fields of economics, psychology, ethology, anthropology, philosophy, medicine, and law offer a rich variety of perspectives on the nature of commitment and question whether the capacity for making, assessing, and keeping commitments has been shaped by natural selection.

Game theorists have shown that players who use commitment strategies—by learning to convey subjective offers and to gauge commitments others are willing to make—achieve greater success than those who rationally calculate every move for immediate reward. Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment includes contributions from some of the pioneering students of commitment. Their elegant analyses highlight the critical role of reputation-building, and show the importance of investigating how people can believe that others would carry out promises or threats that go against their own self-interest. Other contributors provide real-world examples of commitment across cultures and suggest the evolutionary origins of the capacity for commitment.

Perhaps nowhere is the importance of commitment and reputation more evident than in the institutions of law, medicine, and religion. Essays by professionals in each field explore why many practitioners remain largely ethical in spite of manifest opportunities for client exploitation. Finally, Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment turns to leading animal behavior experts to explore whether non-humans also use commitment strategies, most notably through the transmission of threats or signs of non-aggression. Such examples illustrate how such tendencies in humans may have evolved.

Viewed as an adaptive evolutionary strategy, commitment offers enormous potential for explaining complex and irrational emotional behaviors within a biological framework. Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment presents compelling evidence for this view, and offers a potential bridge across the current rift between biology and the social sciences.

RANDOLPH NESSE is professor of psychiatry and professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

CONTRIBUTORS: Randolph Nesse, Eldridge S. Adams, Robert Boyd, Dov Cohen, Lee Alan Dugatkin, Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Oliver R. Goodenough, Jack Hirshleifer, William Irons, Peter J. Richerson, Michael Ruse, Thomas C. Schelling, Joan B. Silk, and Joseph Vandello.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

Trust is essential to economic and social transactions of all kinds, from choosing a marriage partner, to taking a job, and even buying a used car. The benefits to be gained from such transactions originate in the willingness of individuals to take risks by placing trust in others to behave in cooperative and non-exploitative ways. But how do humans decide whether or not to trust someone? Using findings from evolutionary psychology, game theory, and laboratory experiments, Trust and Reciprocity examines the importance of reciprocal relationships in explaining the origins of trust and trustworthy behavior.

In Part I, contributor Russell Hardin argues that before one can understand trust one must account for the conditions that make someone trustworthy. Elinor Ostrom discusses evidence that individuals achieve outcomes better than those predicted by models of game theory based on purely selfish motivations. In Part II, the book takes on the biological foundations of trust. Frans de Waal illustrates the deep evolutionary roots of trust and reciprocity with examples from the animal world, such as the way chimpanzees exchange social services like grooming and sharing. Other contributors look at the links between evolution, cognition, and behavior. Kevin McCabe examines how the human mind processes the complex commitments that reciprocal relationships require, summarizing brain imaging experiments that suggest the frontal lobe region is activated when humans try to cooperate with their fellow humans. Acknowledging the importance of game theory as a theoretical model for examining strategic relationships, in Part III the contributors tackle the question of how simple game theoretic models must be extended to explain behavior in situations involving trust and reciprocity. Reviewing a range of experimental studies, Karen Cook and Robin Cooper conclude that trust is dependent on the complex relationships between incentives and individual characteristics, and must be examined in light of the social contexts which promote or erode trust. As an example, Catherine Eckel and Rick Wilson explore how people's cues, such as facial expressions and body language, affect whether others will trust them.

The divergent views in this volume are unified by the basic conviction that humans gain through the development of trusting relationships. Trust and Reciprocity advances our understanding of what makes people willing or unwilling to take the risks involved in building such relationships and why.

ELINOR OSTROM is Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and codirector of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, Bloomington.

JAMES WALKER is Professor of Economics and co-associate director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington.

CONTRIBUTORS: T.K. Ahn, Karen S. Cook, Robin M. Cooper, Frans B.M. de Waal, Catherine C. Eckel, James Henley, Russell Hardin, William T. Harbaugh, Kate Krause, Robert Kurzban, Margaret Levi, Steven G. Liday, Jr., Kevin A. McCabe, Tomonori Morikawa, John Orbell, David Schmidt, Vernon L. Smith, Lise Vesterlund, Rick K. Wilson, Toshio Yamagishi.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

High rates of divorce, single-parenthood, and nonmarital cohabitation are forcing Americans to reexamine their definition of family. This evolving social reality requires public policy to evolve as well. The Future of the Family brings together the top scholars of family policy—headlined by editors Lee Rainwater, Tim Smeeding, and, in his last published work, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—to take stock of the state of the family in the United States today and address the ways in which public policy affects the family and vice versa.

The volume opens with an assessment of new forms of family, discussing how reduced family income and lower parental involvement can disadvantage children who grow up outside of two-parent households. The book then presents three vastly dissimilar recommendations—each representing a different segment of the political spectrum—for how family policy should adapt to these changes. Child psychologist Wade Horn argues the case of political conservatives that healthy two-parent families are the best way to raise children and therefore should be actively promoted by government initiatives. Conversely, economist Nancy Folbre argues that government’s role lies not in prescribing family arrangements but rather in recognizing and fostering the importance of caregivers within all families, conventional or otherwise. Will Marshall and Isabel Sawhill borrow policy prescriptions from the left and the right, arguing for more initiatives that demand personal responsibility from parents, as well as for an increase in workplace flexibility and the establishment of universal preschool programs. The book follows with commentary by leading policy analysts Samuel Preston, Frank Furstenberg Jr., and Irwin Garfinkel on the merits of the conservative and liberal arguments. Each suggests that marriage promotion alone is not enough to ensure a happy, healthy, and prosperous future for American children who are caught up in the vortex of family change. They agree that government investments in children, however, can promote superior developmental outcomes and even potentially encourage traditional families by enlarging the pool of “marriageable” individuals for the next generation.

No government action can reverse trends in family formation or return America to the historic nuclear family model. But understanding social change is an essential step in fashioning effective policy for today’s families. With authoritative insight, The Future of the Family broadens and updates our knowledge of how public policy and demography shape one another.

DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN was university professor at Syracuse University until his untimely death in March 2003, as well as a former United States senator and ambassador to India and the United Nations.

TIMOTHY M. SMEEDING is the Maxwell Professor of Public Policy at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and overall director of the Luxembourg Income Study.

LEE RAINWATER is professor of sociology emeritus at Harvard University and research director of the Luxembourg Income Study.

CONTRIBUTORS: Daniel P. Moynihan, Lee Rainwater, Timothy M. Smeeding, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, David T. Ellwood, Nancy Folbre, Frank F. Furstenberg, Irwin Garfinkel, Janet C. Gornick, Wade F. Horn, Christopher Jencks, Kathnleen Kiernan, Will Marshall, Sara McLanahan, Samuel H. Preston, Isabel V. Sawhill, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, and Douglas A. Wolf.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

Discusses the place and position of the professional in society today. Wilbert E. Moore attempts to define the characteristics of the professional and to describe the attributes that give professionals the basis for status and esteem. Dr. Moore maintains that the modern scale of professionalism demands a full-time occupation, commitment to a calling, authenticated membership in a formalized organization, advanced education, service orientation, and autonomy restrained by responsibility. The author discusses the professional's interaction on various levels—with his clients, his peers, his employers, his fellows in complementary occupations, and society at large.

WILBERT E. MOORE was past president of the American Sociological Association, a sociologist at Russell Sage Foundation, and visiting professor at Princeton University.

Educators and policymakers who share the goal of equal opportunity in schools often hold differing notions of what entails a just school in multicultural America. Some emphasize the importance of integration and uniform treatment for all, while others point to the benefits of honoring cultural diversity in ways that make minority students feel at home. In Just Schools, noted legal scholars, educators, and social scientists examine schools with widely divergent methods of fostering equality in order to explore the possibilities and limits of equal education today.

The contributors to Just Schools combine empirical research with rich ethnographic accounts to paint a vivid picture of the quest for justice in classrooms around the nation. Legal scholar Martha Minow considers the impact of school choice reforms on equal educational opportunities. Psychologist Hazel Rose Markus examines culturally sensitive programs where students exhibit superior performance on standardized tests and feel safer and more interested in school than those in color-blind programs. Anthropologist Heather Lindkvist reports on how Somali Muslims in Lewiston, Maine, invoked the American ideal of inclusiveness in winning dress-code exemptions and accommodations for Islamic rituals in the local public school.  Political scientist Austin Sarat looks at a school system in which everyone endorses multiculturalism but holds conflicting views on the extent to which culturally sensitive practices should enter into the academic curriculum. Anthropologist Barnaby Riedel investigates how a private Muslim school in Chicago aspires to universalist ideals, and education scholar James Banks argues that schools have a responsibility to prepare students for citizenship in a multicultural society. Anthropologist John Bowen offers a nuanced interpretation of educational commitments in France and the headscarf controversy in French schools. Anthropologist Richard Shweder concludes the volume by connecting debates about diversity in schools with a broader conflict between national assimilation and cultural autonomy.

As America’s schools strive to accommodate new students from around the world, Just Schools provides a provocative and insightful look at the different ways we define and promote justice in schools and in society at large.

MARTHA MINOW is Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

RICHARD A. SHWEDER is William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.

HAZEL ROSE MARKUS is Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychology and director of the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: James A. Banks, John R. Bowen, Heather L. Lindkvist, Barnaby Riedel, Austin Sarat. 

Every four years, the drama of presidential selection inspires a reassessment of our political parties. Central to this assessment are the delegates who gather at Democratic and Republican national conventions. Parties in Transition presents a richly modulated body of data of the changing attitudes and behaviors of these delegates—their ideologies and loyalties, their recruitment into presidential politics, their persistence in or disengagement from it. Covering three recent sets of conventions and involving over five thousand delegates, this comprehensive study makes an essential contribution to our understanding of American party politics.

"Richer and more authoritative than most of the best works in the field." —Election Politics

"A most important study of change in the American political scene....Richly deserves to be read." —John H. Kessel, Ohio State University

"[A] shrewd and sophisticated analysis....Both scholars and practitioners should read this book and ponder it."—Austin Ranney, University of California, Berkeley

WARREN E. MILLER is professor of political science at Arizona State University and research scientist at the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.

M. KENT JENNINGS is professor of political science at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and program director at the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan.

While headlines about violent crimes committed by adolescents often capture the public's attention, many more young people excel in the classroom, on the athletic field, and in the community. Why do some youngsters strive to achieve while others court disaster? Using new data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a survey of more than nine thousand young people between the ages of twelve and sixteen, Social Awakening explores the choices adolescents make about their lives and their futures. The book focuses on the key role the family plays as teenagers navigate the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood.

Social Awakening analyzes a wide range of adolescent behavior and issues that affect teenagers' lives—from their dating and sexual behavior, drug and alcohol use, and physical and mental well-being, to their career goals and expectations for the future. The findings strengthen our understanding of how an array of family characteristics—single parenthood, income, educational level, race, and geographical location—influences teens' lives. One contributor explores why children from single-parent families are more likely to perform poorly in school and to indulge in risky behavior, such as drug abuse or promiscuous sexual activity. Another chapter examines why children of parents with a college degree are less likely to engage in early sexual activity. And another looks at different levels of criminal behavior among urban and rural youths.

One of the advantages of an in-depth interview such as the NLSY is the wide array of behavior and experiences by the same youths that can be mutually investigated. The analysis in Social Awakening helps confirm or refute what we think we know—to explore what we could not explore with older or less complex surveys. The NLSY, which forms the foundation of Social Awakening, will be updated annually over the coming decades to enable experts to learn how those who were adolescents at the dawn of the twenty-first century handled the move to adulthood. Social Awakening provides a compelling first look at these young peoples' lives.

ROBERT T. MICHAEL is Elkiam Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor and dean of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: Yasuo Abe,  Laura M. Argys,  Courtney Bickert,  John Cawley,  Pinka Chatterji,  Jeff Dominitz,  Baruch Fischoff,  Diane Gibson,  Charles F. Manski,  Mignon R. Moore,  H. Elizabeth Peters, Charles R. Pierret,  Robin L. Tepper,  James R. Walker,  L. Susan Williams. 
 

Teachers, social workers, psychologists, and sociologists carried out an ambitious, six-year experiment in individual casework and group therapy with potential problem girls in a New York City vocational high school. Conducted in collaboration with Youth Consultation Service, this provocative study provides valuable data on adolescent girls—and raises compelling questions on the extent to which casework can be effective in interrupting deviant careers.

HENRY J. MEYER is professor in the School of Social Work and the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan.

EDGAR F. BORGATTA is chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin.

WYATT C. JONES is senior research scientist in the School of Social Work at Columbia University

ELIZABETH P. ANDERSON is director of Youth Consultation Service.

HANNA GRUNWALD is group therapy consultant.

DOROTHY HEADLEY is senior group therapist.

Despite ongoing efforts to maintain ethical standards, highly publicized episodes of corporate misconduct occur with disturbing frequency. Firms produce defective products, release toxic substances into the environment, or permit dangerous conditions to existin their workplaces. The propensity for irresponsible acts is not confined to rogue companies, but crops up in even the most respectable firms. Codes of Conduct is the first comprehensive attempt to understand these problems by applying the principles of modern behavioral science to the study of organizational behavior.

Codes of Conduct probes the psychological and social processes through which companies and their managers respond to a wide array of ethical dilemmas, from risk and safety management to the treatment of employees. The contributors employ a wide range of case studies to illustrate the effects of social influence and group persuasion, organizational authority and communication, fragmented responsibility, and the process of rationalization. John Darley investigates how unethical acts are unintentionally assembled within organizations as a result of cascading pressures and social processes. Essays by Roderick Kramer and David Messick and by George Loewenstein focus on irrational decision making among managers. Willem Wagenaar examines how worker safety is endangered by management decisions that focus too narrowly on cost cutting and short time horizons. Essays by Baruch Fischhoff and by Robyn Dawes review the role of the expert in assessing environmental risk.

Robert Bies reviews evidence that employees are more willing to provide personal information and to accept affirmative action programs if they are consulted on the intended procedures and goals. Stephanie Goodwin and Susan Fiske discuss how employees can be educated to base office judgments on personal qualities rather than on generalizations of gender, race, and ethnicity. Codes of Conduct makes an important scientific contribution to the understanding of decisionmaking and social processes in business, and offers clear insights into the design of effective policies to improve ethical conduct.

DAVID M. MESSICK is at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

ANN E. TENBRUNSEL is at the College of Business Administration, University of Notre Dame.

CONTRIBUTORS: Jonathan Baron, Max H. Bazerman, Maura A. Belliveau, Francisco J. Benzoni, Robert J. Bies, Marilynn B. Brewer, Robert B. Cialdini, John M. Darley, Robyn M. Dawes, Thomas Donaldson, Baruch Fischhoff, Susan T. Fiske, Robert H. Frank, Stephanie A. Goodwin, Russell Hardin, Helmut Jungermann, Joshua Klayman, Roderick M. Kramer, George Loewenstein, Robert Mauro, Ann L. McGill, David M. Messick, Myron Rothbart, Ann E. Tenbrunsel, Tom R. Tyler, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Willem A. Wagenaar, and Patricia H. Werhane.

In a multi-cultural society, differing worldviews among groups can lead to conflict over competing values and behaviors. Nowhere is this tension more concrete than in the wilderness, where people of different cultures hunt and fish for the same animals. White Americans tend to see nature as something external which they have some responsibility to care for. In contrast, Native Americans are more likely to see themselves as one with nature. In Culture and Resource Conflict, authors Douglas Medin, Norbert Ross, and Douglas Cox investigate the discord between whites and Menominee American Indians over hunting and fishing, and in the process, contribute to our understanding of how and why cultures so often collide.

Based on detailed ethnographic and experimental research, Culture and Resource Conflict finds that Native American and European American hunters and fishermen have differing approaches—or mental models—with respect to fish and game, and that these differences lead to misunderstanding, stereotyping, and conflict. Menominee look at the practice of hunting and fishing for sport as a sign of a lack of respect for nature. Whites, on the other hand, define respect for nature more on grounds of resource management and conservation. Some whites believe—contrary to fact—that Native Americans are depleting animal populations with excessive hunting and fishing, while the Menominee protest that they only hunt what they need and make extensive use of their catch. Yet the authors find that, despite these differences, the two groups share the fundamental underlying goal of preserving fish and game for future generations, and both groups see hunting and fishing as deeply meaningful activities. At its core, the conflict between these two groups is more about mistrust and stereotyping than actual disagreement over values.

Combining the strengths of psychology and anthropology, Culture and Resource Conflict shows how misunderstandings about the motives of others can lead to hostility and conflict. As debates over natural resources rage worldwide, this unique book demonstrates the obstacles that must be overcome for different groups to reach consensus over environmental policy.

DOUGLAS L. MEDIN is professor of psychology and education and social policy at Northwestern University.

NORBERT O. ROSS is assistant professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University.

DOUGLAS G. COX is an environmental specialist at the Hilary J. Waukau Environmental Services Center on the Menominee reservation in Wisconsin.