Beliefs Research Articles

Attention to climate change and downside risk: Evidence from China.

We explore the role of public climate attention, captured by the Baidu search volume index, in the downside risk. Using 45 keywords from five perspectives related to climate change, we construct a public climate attention index in China. We find a positive and significant relationship between climate attention and downside risk at the market-level and firm-level. Moreover, the risk-increase effect of climate attention becomes more prominent for state-owned and high-carbon-emission firms. Further analysis shows that excellent sustainable performance can moderate the adverse effect of rising climate attention, while the major climate disasters exacerbate the effect. Overall, our findings shed additional light on the important role of collective climate beliefs in corporate risk management and investor decision-making.

'You don't compare horrors, you just don't do that': Examining assumptions and extending the scope of comparative victim beliefs.

Social psychological research on collective victimhood has often focused on comparisons between the ingroup's and outgroups' collective victimization (i.e. comparative victim beliefs such as competitive victimhood or inclusive victim beliefs). This qualitative study examines how people in different contexts of collective victimization and its aftermath make sense of items commonly used to assess comparative victim beliefs, and how they extend or challenge these constructs and their underlying assumptions. We used thematic analysis to analyse eight focus group discussions among four minority groups in the United States with historical or more recent experiences of collective victimization (Armenian Americans, Burundian refugees, Jewish Americans and Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees). Findings extend commonly assessed comparative victim beliefs and reveal participants' critical perspectives on these constructs. The findings also highlight the dialectical structure of collective victim beliefs: Participants not only endorsed but also rejected comparative victim beliefs, and relatedly described both ingroup power and outgroup power in the context of their group's victimization. These findings extend existing social psychological literature on comparative victim beliefs and intergroup relations.

Valuing trans-disciplinarity: Forum Theatre in Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico

ABSTRACT This article intervenes in the persistent hierarchy of epistemological worth that produces scientific knowledge as meaningful, and knowledge from arts or humanities as marginal, or illustrative. The specific trans-disciplinary project we discuss brings together environmental social sciences with performance-based Forum Theatre methods to explore ‘value’ as understood in communities in Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico in relation to Payment for Ecosystem Services. Trans-disciplinary collaborations that seek to incorporate ‘novel’ methods to engage participants differently might better reflect the dynamic, emergent, and often shifting nature of beliefs, attitudes and values.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

The security mindset: Corrections officer workplace culture in late mass incarceration

Prison officers’ behavior is one of the most consequential features of the modern prison. In this article, we introduce an organizational culture conceptual framework and build on previous prison scholarship to develop a model of prison officer workplace culture. We then apply the proposed model to original research in a US prison to investigate the relational aspects of prison officer culture during early 21st-century penal reforms. We find a set of collective norms and beliefs among officers consistent with the “traditional” prison officer culture historically documented by penologists, including high levels of distrust of prisoners, avoidance of relationships, and distancing from rehabilitation goals. We name this culture the “security mindset” because officers use multiple conceptions of “security” to rationalize their behavior. Our findings suggest that prison officer culture in late mass incarceration may work against the positive and supportive relationships necessary for rehabilitation.

Their own worst enemy? Collective narcissists are willing to conspire against their in-group.

Collective narcissism - a belief in in-group greatness that is not appreciated by others - is associated with using one's group for personal benefits. Across one pilot and four studies, we demonstrated that collective narcissism predicts readiness to conspire against in-group members (rmeta-analysis =.24). In Study 1, conducted in Poland (N=361), collective narcissism measured in the context of national identity predicted readiness to engage in secret surveillance against one's own country's citizens. In Study 2 (N=174; pre-registered), collective narcissism in UK workplace teams predicted intentions to engage in conspiracies against co-workers. In Study 3 (N=471; pre-registered), US national narcissism predicted intentions to conspire against fellow citizens. Furthermore, conspiracy intentions accounted for the relationship between collective narcissism and beliefs in conspiracy theories about the in-group. Finally, in Study 4 (N=1064; pre-registered), we corroborated the link between Polish national narcissism and conspiracy intentions against fellow citizens, further showing that these intentions were only directed towards group members that were perceived as moderately or strongly typical of the national in-group (but not when perceived in-group typicality was low). In-group identification was either negatively related (Studies 1 and 2) or unrelated (Studies 3 and 4) to conspiracy intentions (rmeta-analysis =.04). We discuss implications for research on conspiracy theories and populism.

Relativization the Vision of Good-Evil Duality in “Povestea lui Stan Pățitul” by Ion Creangă

There are several aspects that clearly distinguish Povestea lui Stan Pățitul from other tales by Ion Creangă: the structural/ morphological one (the evolution of the subject is not determined by the struggle between the forces of good and evil, but by the protagonist's way of perceiving reality and relating to it), that of the characters’ (psychological / spiritual / moral) pattern, that of the fabulous world construction (based on a different principle than the Manichaean one). In Povestea lui Stan Pățitul, Ion Creangă relativizes the good-evil duality, subtextualizing a new existential philosophy that marks the vision of human nature and the way of representing the artistic world. Through paradox, irony, allusion, illustrative dialogues and scenes, the author proves the (in)validity of some common perceptions of forms, dimensions, moral judgments (good-bad, right-wrong etc.), of several collective stereotypes and beliefs. By diluting the distinction between good and evil, the author reveals the relative character of any truth.

Sein und Schein (bei Wittgenstein)

Abstract Reality and Appearance (in Wittgenstein). At the beginning of On Certainty, as its second entry, Wittgenstein makes a remark according to which the fact that something appears to me, or to all of us, to be so and so does not entail the fact that it is so and so. This looks like a straightforward philosophical claim made by Wittgenstein. This claim fits into a family of views on the nature of the relation between appearance and reality which in turn is related to a family of views concerning the nature of belief, knowledge and certainty. However, it is common experience with Wittgenstein’s remarks that what appears to be a straightforward philosophical claim is actually no such thing. The essay follows that experience to a point where it becomes unclear what the remark about appearance and reality could possibly be if not a philosophical claim.

The dark side of belief in Covid-19 scientists and scientific evidence

We draw from an interdisciplinary literature on convictions to examine the manifestations and consequences of firmly held beliefs in Covid-19 (C19) science. Across three studies (N = 743), we assess participants' beliefs in C19 experts, and beliefs in supported and unsupported empirical evidence. Study 1 establishes the basic theoretical links and we show that an individual's belief in science on C19 is associated with dispositional belief in science and moralization of C19 mitigation measures. Our subsequent two studies show how stronger belief in C19 science influences distrust in unmasked individuals past the mandates, and greater endorsement of pandemic mitigation authoritarianism. We document the dark side that emerges when belief in C19 science extends beyond the generally desirable scientific literacy and manifests as a conviction that public health experts are the only ones who can handle the pandemic, and that even unsupported claims about C19 are supported by scientific evidence (e.g., risk of outdoor transmission is high). We also highlight our political ideology findings showing that both liberals and conservatives mis-calibrate C19 risks in different ways, and we conclude with discussing how examining the darker side of scientific beliefs can inform our understanding of people's reactions to the pandemic.

Design and validation of a self-administered questionnaire to assess knowledge, attitudes and behaviours about Zika virus infection among general population in Italy


 
 
 Background Zika (ZIKV), a flavivirus firstly identified in rhesus monkeys in Zika Forest of Uganda, in 1947, is an emerging virus transmitted mainly by mosquitoes bites. Due to ZIKV adaptation to humans, that can maintain a mosquito-human-mosquito transmission cycle, it is essential to know the attitudes, knowledge and behaviours of general population regarding ZIKV prevention. Our main study aims were to develop and validate a questionnaire administered to the general population, in order to assess attitudes, knowledge and behaviours around prevention and control of Zika infection. Methods A questionnaire was developed based on a comprehensive review of the extant literature, pre-existing questionnaires and experts focus groups. Results The final, validation version of the questionnaire comprised 8 items, with good psychometric properties (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.81). Overall test/re-test concordance was 0.86, ranging from 0.76 to 0.94 according to each item. Conclusion In conclusion, the questionnaire seems to be an appropriate and useful tool to detect cognitive gaps concerning behaviours responsible for possible transmissions of the disease, even in a non-endemic country such as Italy. Future analysis will explore the factorial structure of the questionnaire as well as knowledge, beliefs and attitudes concerning ZIKV among Italian general population.
 

The Nature of Work in the Media Industries: A Literature Review and Future Directions

Media work is a culture-making activity affecting the ways people understand the world and, therefore, workers in the media industries have a critical role in shaping collective memories, traditions, and belief systems. While studies regarding the characteristics impacting the nature of work in the media industries have significantly been increasing over the last years, the literature in this area remains highly fragmented. This paper begins to address that shortcoming by conducting an in-depth review of 36 scholarly papers in influential journals published from 2006 to 2020 to provide a comprehensive view of the literature and its approaches. This study elaborates on the concept of media work by organizing previous efforts into five subthemes, including commonalities, contested terrain, gendered profession, emerging practices, and influencing factors. Previous research has emphasized that media workers’ subjective experiences need to be explored further and more in-depth; however, if we wish to depict a more holistic but realistic picture, those experiences should be contextualized and thus linked with the specific organizational configurations and macro structures in which media work is embedded. The present review depicts how work in the media may take different meanings when addressing it through various theoretical frameworks. Our study can enrich future studies regarding the nature of media work by providing a fine-grained foundation in which researchers could understand how their given research problem(s) would be connected with the other issues that potentially impact their studies.

Debunking Doxastic Transparency

In this paper I consider the project of offering an evolutionary debunking explanation for transparency in doxastic deliberation. I examine Nicole Dular and Nikki Fortier’s (2021) attempt at such a project. I suggest that their account faces a dilemma. On the one horn, their explanation of transparency involves casting our mechanisms for belief formation as solely concerned with truth. I argue that this is explanatorily inadequate when we take a wider view of our belief formation practices. I show that Dular and Fortier overstate the extent to which adaptive non-evidentially supported beliefs are rare, and the implausibility of disjunctive evolutionary systems. They should allow a role for the non-truth directed behaviour of our mechanisms of belief formation. On the other hand, we might restrict the explanation offered by Dular and Fortier to the deliberative context, that is, we might understand them as allowing for non-evidential belief formation outside of the deliberative context, but as identifying the key to explaining transparency in the truth-directed evolutionary mechanisms as they operate in the deliberative context. However, this would land them on the second horn of the dilemma: we would then have no different an explanation to one I have offered elsewhere (2018), an explanation which Dular and Fortier explicitly put aside as engaged in a project different from their own. I finish by briefly considering some broader implications relating to explaining transparency, the nature of belief, and the prospects for pragmatism. I conclude that Dular and Fortier’s debunking explanation of transparency bestows an implausible role for truth in fixing our beliefs, or, if it doesn’t, then we simply have the restatement of a view explicitly disavowed by the authors. We are left, then, with an explanation we ought not want, or an explanation we already had

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PERCEIVED COLLECTIVE EFFICACY BELIEFS AND INTERPERSONAL EMOTION REGULATION TO TURKISH EFL TEACHERS’ JOB STRESS

The goal of this study was to explore the relationship between perceived job stress and a specific set of predictor variables among the selected university preparatory school EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers in Turkey. To comprehensively analyze the issue of perceived job stress, interpersonal emotion regulation, and teacher collective efficacy used as variables. The sample consisted of 48 EFL teachers in various Turkish university preparatory schools. It was hypothesized that high levels of teacher collective efficacy beliefs would be a negative predictor of perceived stress among the EFL teachers. A negative relationship was also predicted between interpersonal emotion regulation and perceived job stress levels among the selected teachers. The research hypotheses were tested using data collected through surveys. While the relationship between EFL teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs and interpersonal emotion regulation was significant, their perceived job stress and interpersonal emotion regulation were negatively related, but the association was not strong enough to reach a significant level. The results of the study indicated that demographic variables such as age, and the years of language teaching experience did not have any significant effect on teachers’ collective self-efficacy belief, perceived job stress, and interpersonal emotion regulation of the selected Turkish EFL Instructors in university preparatory programs. The study highlighted the fact that enhancing EFL teachers’ collective efficacy belief would reduce the tension teachers experience in the form of stress and would improve their emotion regulation skills.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0914/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Responsibility for Collective Epistemic Harms

AbstractDiscussion of epistemic responsibility typically focuses on belief formation and actions leading to it. Similarly, accounts of collective epistemic responsibility have addressed the issue of collective belief formation and associated actions. However, there has been little discussion of collective responsibility for preventing epistemic harms, particularly those preventable only by the action of an unorganized group. We propose an account of collective epistemic responsibility that fills this gap. Building on Hindriks’s (2019) account of collective moral responsibility, we introduce the epistemic duty to join forces. Our theory provides an account of the responsibilities of scientists to prevent epistemic harms during inquiry.

Putting the past into action: How historical narratives shape participation in collective action

AbstractWhy do some people perceive more injustice, feel more anger, or hold higher collective efficacy beliefs, and thereby are readier to engage in collective action than others? Our understanding of collective action is incomplete without a better understanding of what shapes variation in its antecedents. In this article, we highlight and elaborate historical narratives’ role in driving engagement in collective action. By integrating research and theory on historical narratives and collective action, we propose a theoretical model specifying historical narratives’ impact on three main predictors of collective action—perceived injustice, group efficacy beliefs, and group identity—as well as on forms of collective action. We elaborate on how different dimensions of historical narratives (e.g., historical trajectories, historical attributions) influence each antecedent of collective action and shape action choice. This article contributes to literature by establishing a theoretical basis that explains how historical narratives can either impede or foster collective action tendencies.

Beyond the Context of Cultural Confidence: A Study of Communication Competence of the Chinese School

Chinese animated films such as Monkey King: Hero is Back in 2015, Big Fish & Begonia in 2016 and Ne Zha: I am the Destiny in 2019 won higher box office and they achieved a similar popularity as the Wolf Warriors (2015 and 2017) in China’s film market. Perhaps partially because these animations bring audience a sense of familiarization such as they reveal popular culture and collective beliefs (i.e., “I’m the Destiny” as a slogan) to promote cultural identity. On the other hand, the making of Chinese animated films has been gradually getting mature in narration, adaptation, and creation. Both the production mode and the industrial scope have been formed to compete with Japanese anime and American cartoons. Though there are still many problems in making Chinese animations, Chinese School has been working on interpretating and deconstructing the essence of Chinese culture in their animated works. This attitude also marks Chinese School’s determination to disseminate Chinese culture so as to rebuild its confidence towards the animation world.

Harnessing the power of promising technologies to transform science education: prospects and challenges to promote adaptive epistemic beliefs in science learning

ABSTRACT Forming learners’ science concepts and conceptual change entails adaptive epistemic beliefs to support a high degree of interactivity within a coherent knowledge structure. Adaptive epistemic beliefs are characterized by beliefs that knowledge is uncertain and should be justified through experimentation or multiple sources dependent upon the task contexts. Thus, assessing and evaluating learners’ adaptive epistemic beliefs is a complex process that requires laborious analysis of learner artifacts based on reliable and valid coding schemes. This article aims to describe new ways of assessing and applying technologies that can measure and foster adaptive epistemic beliefs. We propose new strategies for a theoretically-based human-and-machine symbiotic Learning Analytics (LA) framework. The application of this LA framework may facilitate the development of real-time detecting and representation of the individual and collective epistemic belief networks as well as diagnosing and providing appropriate scaffolds to promote adaptive epistemic beliefs via the design of personalised pedagogical feedback with experts’ input. The heuristic application of technology infrastructure may propel a movement for more tangible and personalised learning in science education. The current gaps of using AI-based emerging technologies in science learning and implications for science education are discussed to advance science education in new directions.

Collectivistic norms, beliefs and Mexican OCBs: gender and generation differences

PurposeThe authors study the role of collectivistic norms and beliefs on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in Mexico, including differences across gender and generations.Design/methodology/approachThe authors researched the relationship between Mexican employees' collectivistic norms and beliefs and their OCBs, which the authors grouped into etic (universal), emic (regional) and unique (indigenous) categories, the latter referred to as Mexican OCBs (MOCBs). The authors also studied the role of gender and generations as moderators.FindingsCollective norms had a positive relationship only on the etic OCBs of sportsmanship, while collective beliefs impacted altruism and civic virtue; the etic OCBs of personal development, protecting company resources, interpersonal harmony; and the MOCBs of dedication and camaraderie. Collective beliefs on the etic OCB of altruism, the emic OCB of protecting company resources and the unique MOCB of camaraderie were stronger for workers from Xers than for Millennials. Moderation tests also showed that collective belief had stronger effects on the emic OCB of protecting company resources and the unique MOCBs of dedication and camaraderie for men than for women.Research limitations/implicationsGender roles in emerging economies where society is characterized by collectivistic attributes, especially in a sample drawn from professional employees, may have changed. This could explain the reason why most of the interactions were stronger for men. Future studies involving gender roles should look beyond a demographic variable and design an instrument measuring self-perceptions of role identity, such as the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974). This study's findings could be generalized, particularly, to other Latin American nations, but scholars should acknowledge differences in economic development and gender roles, as well as unique cultural elements (Arriagada, 2014; Hofstede, 1980).Practical implicationsThe results of this study yield three practical implications for international managers, including (1) distinguishing between the impact of changing cultural norms or beliefs on OCBs, (2) understanding how demographic factors such as gender or generation may influence the degree of OCBs exhibited in the workplace by specific employee groups, and (3) identifying cultural contexts which promote OCBs. First, workers from a younger generation in a collectivistic society, such as Millennials, respond less positively than workers from older generations to cultural beliefs concerning OCBs, such that they are less willing to engage in a particular category of OCBs including protecting company resources.Social implicationsGlobal managers should be aware that employees engage in distinct OCBs for different reasons. Emphasizing cultural rules and norms behind helping one another may backfire in Mexico, particularly among men and younger generations of workers. This is understandable for these OCBs. For example, engaging in personal development for the organization's sake due to collective norms may be less effective that pursuing personal development opportunities that employees are passionate about or recognize as beneficial for their careers. Dedication and sportsmanship behaviors that stem from rules are likely less strong or effective as OCBs employees engage in due to strong beliefs or altruistic spontaneity.Originality/valueThe authors filled a gap in scholar's understanding of cultural norms and beliefs on behavior. Specifically, the authors found that cultural beliefs shape etic, emic and unique MOCBs, particularly for men and older generations, and that cultural norms have a negligible and sometimes negative role, being positively related only to the etic OCB of sportsmanship.

Post-high-school pathways: The role of dispositional beliefs and aspirations

Are non-cognitive factors affecting youth's educational pathways after high school graduation? What differentiate college-going students who enroll in a 4-year public, 4-year private not-for-profit, or 2-year public institution in the United States? The study employs the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 to examine the role of student aspirations and dispositional beliefs toward education as key determinants of college participation and type of first postsecondary institution attended within 10 years of high school graduation. The study uses the Theory of Planned Behavior to operationalize dispositional beliefs. Study findings show that in addition to student achievement and high school context, dispositional beliefs and educational aspirations play significant role on student post-high-school pathways, but without removing the systemic outcome differences related to socio-demographic factors.

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Reviewed by: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard Phillip Garland Karl Ove Knausgaard The Morning Star Trans. Martin Aitken. New York. Penguin. 2021. 666 pages. “FIRSTLY THERE WAS no plot, and secondly there was no sequence of events, and no coherence, everything came at you higgledy-piggledy.” So Karl Ove Knausgaard [End Page 64] describes in the fifth volume of My Struggle some of his painstaking efforts to complete his first novel, 1998’s Out of the World. After publishing another novel six years later and then abandoning the form altogether, one can sense in these words Knausgaard’s discomfort with the demands of fiction: plot, character development, readers’ expectations. His response to such constraints was ultimately made manifest in the completion of his massive autobiographical My Struggle series. Since that project’s completion, Knausgaard has written a series of similarly autobiographical books loosely related to the four seasons, collaborated with Fredrik Ekelund to document the 2014 World Cup, and published a remarkable piece of criticism on the work and life of Edvard Munch. These efforts have been marked by an approach largely similar to the one seen in My Struggle: intense self-scrutiny, crystalline imagery, and a proclivity for the spontaneous. The Morning Star, Knausgaard’s long-awaited return to fiction, finds the author operating in a familiar thematic vein by exploring notions of family life, the boundary of death, and the nature of belief and reality, while doing so in a wholly new context: the end of the world. A new star suddenly appears in the Norwegian sky, heralding strange visions, the dead returning to life, and the arrival of an ominous winged creature. These strange events are experienced not by the singular narrator of Knausgaard’s autofiction but instead by a small collection of narrators, which allows Knausgaard to portray how a singular world-changing event can draw out varying shades of human drama, for despite the apocalyptic focus of the novel (which runs a seemingly purposeful 666 pages), its primary concern is what an apocalypse reveals about the inner lives of its characters. Kathrine, a priest, is frightened by the continued reappearance of a man whose funeral she has recently performed; however, it is her realization that she may no longer love her husband, and her response to that realization, that truly haunts her. Likewise, it is Turid who has perhaps the closest encounter with this strange creature, but foremost on her mind throughout the nightmarish events she endures is the well-being of her depressed son. Martin Aitken’s translation retains the evocative language of his earlier contributions that were characterized by starkly beautiful descriptions of nature and the warm realism of domestic life. Throughout The Morning Star, Knausgaard rarely loses sight of the mundane and the personal amidst all the biblical-scale upheaval. One character certainly runs counter to this. Portrayed as both a scholar and a dilettante, Egil is a difficult character to read on account of the considerable number of pages allotted to his story. Is he meant to be taken seriously or is Knausgaard poking fun at himself? It can be hard to know at points. It is his lengthy essay on death that concludes the novel and bears the marks of Knausgaard at his most heady and unrestrained, recalling especially the last volume of My Struggle wherein Knausgaard shifts from his spare, naturalistic, and disciplined persona into the dry and garrulous academic devoting hundreds of pages to an analysis of Paul Celan’s poetry and the life of Adolf Hitler. It made for difficult reading then as Egil’s pages do now, tucked in as they are among characters that not only have far more at stake but are also enlivened by their more proximal exposure to the events of the apocalypse. It is only when Egil turns to his own life and recalls the events of one strange train journey, the most direct and powerful passage in the entire novel, that his value as narrator begins to reveal itself and you understand why Knausgaard chose his voice to be the concluding one of this book, the first of a planned series that should put both the author and...