SCIENCE NOTEBOOK

Monday, March 10, 2008

Unset in Their Ways

As the Democratic presidential primary race moves to Pennsylvania and Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton try to woo that state's large elderly population, the campaigns and their followers might want to take note of some recent sociological research that turns conventional wisdom about elderly people's attitudes on its head.

While traditional stereotypes suggest elderly people are set in their ways and more likely to hold racist and sexist attitudes, research suggests that elderly Americans are more likely to be influenced by the norms of younger people than by the norms of their forebears.

Older people are actually more likely than younger adults to update their attitudes about blacks and women, as well as about privacy issues and civil liberties, in light of prevailing norms, according to research by sociologists Nicholas L. Danigelis and Stephen J. Cutler at the University of Vermont and Melissa A. Hardy at Pennsylvania State University.

Not only are older adults more likely than younger adults to change their attitudes, these changes are more likely to lean in the direction of greater openness and tolerance, the scientists reported in the American Sociological Review last year. The sociologists studied 30 years of survey data that included 46,510 people.

"It proves that some of the commonly held beliefs about older people being rigid and unwilling to change aren't true," Danigelis said in a statement. "Getting older makes you more conservative, but only if you're a younger person."

-- Shankar Vedantam

Declining Eel Numbers

Climate changes may be altering ocean conditions in ways that are decimating eel populations.

Kevin Friedland, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with colleagues at the University of Tokyo and the University of Westminster, in Britain, found a significant correlation between the decadal circulation pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation and the long-term catches of eels in their juvenile stage, when they are called glass eels.

The three researchers surveyed annual catch data for glass eels since 1938 at Den Oever in the Netherlands and found that with the exception of the World War II years -- when no one collected data -- the catches mirrored changes in ocean conditions.

Both European and American eels spawn in the Sargasso Sea, in an area between the Bahamas and Bermuda. The transparent leaflike larvae, known as leptocephali, stay in surface waters for up to a year and drift toward the Gulf Stream, which transports the European eels to coastal waters there. The stream, along with the Antilles Current and other circulation patterns, directs American eel larvae toward the U.S. East Coast.

Since the 1970s, the number of eels reaching Europe is estimated to have dropped by more than 90 percent.

Since glass eels tend to live in the top 330 feet of the water column, Friedland said in a statement, "any changes in the surface waters will have a big impact during critical stages in their development." The paper will appear in the ICES Journal of Marine Research.

-- Juliet Eilperin

Boss's Abuse Is Costly

Getting ridiculed at work may not be illegal. But it can be just as psychologically damaging as sexual harassment, according to a study involving tens of thousands of employees at a variety of workplaces.

Yelling bosses may not seem worthy of scientific study. Everybody has had a supervisor with a less than civil demeanor, and most have survived.

M. Sandy Hershcovis, who studies workplace aggression and justice issues at the University of Manitoba, decided to look more closely at the psychological effects, however. Not satisfied with the everyday wisdom that occasional belittling is just part of a day's work, she and Julian Barling of Queen's University in Ontario combined the results of 110 studies conducted over 21 years on the impact of sexual and nonsexual workplace aggression.

The behaviors weathered by employees included verbal and nonverbal rudeness; persistent criticism of their work or repeated reminders of past errors; being shouted at; being the object of gossip or lies; being ignored or excluded; and being the subject of derogatory comments about their personal lives or attitudes.

Compared with those who experienced sexual harassment, those who were subjected to nonsexual abuses reported being more angry, anxious and stressed, more dissatisfied with their jobs and their bosses, and more likely to quit.

The results were reported Saturday at the Seventh International Conference on Work, Stress and Health, held in Washington.

-- Rick Weiss