Social Sciences

Robert Louis Stevenson once quipped that "Marriage...is a field of battle and not a bed of roses." He may be right, but researchers at the University at Buffalo and Stanford University say some marriages are rosier than others -- not because they have no battles, but because of the way the spouses deal with them. And how they deal, the researchers note, depends on how much the partners value themselves and feel valued by the other.

Gambling is widespread -- and spreading -- in American society with 82 percent of individuals interviewed having gambled in the past year, according to a national survey conducted at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) and reported in the Winter 2002 issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies. Previous surveys found gambling participation at 61 percent (1975) and 63 percent (1998).

The Raelians -- the cult behind Clonaid, the company claiming to have cloned a human being -- are a remnant of the "flying-saucer cults" that originated in the 1970s and '80s, according to cult expert Phillips Stevens, Jr., an associate professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo.

The School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo has been selected as the new home of The Clinical Supervisor, a journal that looks at aspects of supervision in the fields of psychotherapy and mental health.

A new method with the potential to quickly detect suspicious patterns in reported illnesses in specific geographic regions is being developed by a geographer at the University at Buffalo. Combining cluster analysis with quality-control techniques traditionally used on assembly lines in factories, the method takes a novel approach to the problem of detecting potentially significant increases in the incidence of disease within specific geographic areas.

It might have killed the cat but a new study by psychologists at the University at Buffalo suggests that curiosity is very good for people. Their study concludes that the degree to which people are curious actively influences their personal growth opportunities and the level of intimacy that develops when they meet someone new.

The School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo will offer its first online graduate-level course, Behavior Disorders of Childhood (SW 992), beginning with the Spring 2003 semester.

University at Buffalo geographers are embarking on a new project designed to find out how school-aged children relate to urban spaces, to create the first "children's geography of the inner city."

Working with survivors of serious car accidents, psychologists at the University at Buffalo are evaluating the use of group therapy to provide effective treatment to individuals experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Researchers affiliated with the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions have been awarded two grants focusing on couples therapy and family treatment for alcoholism and drug abuse, which are among the most effective, but rarely used substance-abuse treatment programs because they are labor-intensive and costly to deliver.