Global Beliefs Research Articles

Validation of the Global Belief in a Just World Scale within the Spanish Population

The concept of justice, though inherently universal, is subject to substantial influence from social factors, affecting its perception. This study is dedicated to the adaptation and validation of an assessment tool for Global Belief in a Just World Scale (GBJWS) in the Spanish context. Our investigation delves into the relationship between Belief in a Just World and key constructs such as Social Dominance, System Justification, and Right-Wing Authoritarianism, while also addressing the dimension of potential gender disparities. Our findings demonstrate robust reliability coefficients, attesting to the scale's aptitude for assessing GBJW and exhibit highly favourable adjustment indices. Notably, our score analysis reveals elevated levels of BJW among men. This comprehensive research endeavour offers an invaluable global metric, facilitating transnational studies for understanding of justice perceptions on a global scale.

BeliefFlow: A Framework for Logic-Based Belief Diffusion via Iterated Belief Change

This paper presents BeliefFlow, a novel framework for representing how logical beliefs spread among interacting agents within a network. In a Belief Flow Network (BFN), agents communicate asynchronously. The agents' beliefs are represented using epistemic states, which encompass their current beliefs and conditional beliefs guiding future changes. When communication occurs between two connected agents, the receiving agent changes its epistemic state using an improvement operator, a well-known type of rational iterated belief change operator that generalizes belief revision operators. We show that BFNs satisfy appealing properties, leading to two significant outcomes. First, in any BFN with strong network connectivity, the beliefs of all agents converge towards a global consensus. Second, within any BFN, we show that it is possible to compute an optimal strategy for influencing the global beliefs. This strategy, which involves controlling the beliefs of a least number of agents through bribery, can be identified from the topology of the network and can be computed in polynomial time.

Spiritual Surrender: Initial Appraisals of Cancer Diagnoses in Black Christian Women

The basis of the meaning-making model is that distress results from discrepancies between one’s global meaning system and one’s situational appraisals of negative life events. This model suggests a preventative function for religion when religious global beliefs inform situational appraisals in ways that minimize distress. Using consensual qualitative research, we evaluated the initial reactions to a cancer diagnosis of 29 Black Christian women. We examined how the women appraised the cancer diagnosis and how this appraisal was related to reported distress. Our results indicated that lower levels of distress were related to believing that God was faithful, while higher levels of distress were related to beliefs in retributive justice and cancer as a death sentence. Lower distress was further related to spiritual surrender, a religious coping practice that combines entrusting the outcome of one’s cancer experience to God and actively pursuing treatment. We discuss spiritual surrender as a collaborative religious coping strategy and highlight its importance in informing culturally sensitive psychological interventions.

Just World Beliefs among Medical Students and the General Public in Hawai‘i

Just World Beliefs (JWBs) are a psychological tendency to conclude the world is an inherently fair place in which people experience the outcomes they deserve. Strong JWBs positively correlate with a personal commitment to long-term ambitions and blaming people for their negative health outcomes. This study aimed to measure JWBs in medical students and the general population of Hawai‘i. It was hypothesized that (1) medical students would have stronger JWBs than the general public, and (2) JWBs would be strongest for medical students in the latter part of their training. Current residents of Hawai‘i and medical students at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa were recruited to complete a web-based survey measuring JWBs using the Global Belief in a Just World Scale. A t-test was used to compare JWB strength between the groups. A regression analysis identified factors predicting strength of JWBs. Contrary to both hypotheses, medical students in Hawai‘i possessed weaker JWBs than Hawai‘i residents (P<.01), and JWBs did not differ based on training duration (P=.97). Age (P<.01) was the only demographic variable to significantly predict JWBs. The difference in JWBs among medical and non-medical cohorts was no longer significant after controlling for age. Among medical students, younger age was associated with weaker JWBs. Future studies should explore the prevalence and effects of JWBs among diverse populations and the medical professionals that care for them.

Gender and Age Invariance of the Global Belief in a Just World Scale

Abstract: Belief in a Just World (BJW) underscores the psychological inclination of individuals to view the world as just, where outcomes typically correspond with one’s actions and behaviors. Despite the widespread application of the Global Belief in a Just World Scale (GBJWS) in the social sciences as a measure for the BJW construct, there remains an insufficient exploration of its measurement invariance across age and gender, especially among Chinese working adults. This study aims to fill this gap by using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) for gender invariance and local structural equation modeling for age invariance assessment. Statistics analyses with 2,128 participants confirmed configural, metric, and scalar invariance for gender, with latent mean comparisons revealing no significant gender differences in BJW. However, age invariance did not reach scalar invariance, suggesting caution in utilizing the one-factor structure of the GBJWS for age-related research. This investigation offers a deeper understanding of the GBJWS’s validity and responds to the pressing call for research on the scale’s applicability across diverse demographic contexts.

Religious meaning-making among Muslim parents bereaved by homicide: Struggling to accept ‘God's will’ and yearning for ‘Qayama’ day

ObjectiveParental bereavement by homicide is considered an extremely difficult grief experience; hence it may significantly undermine one's meaning structures. Although bereaved parents' meaning-making process has been extensively researched, less is known about meaning reconstruction among Muslim parents bereaved by homicide – an understudied population. The study's goal was to gain an in-depth understanding of bereaved Muslim parents' meaning-making process in light of their religious background using Park's religious meaning-making model. MethodsEmploying a qualitative approach, in-depth interviews were held with 12 Muslim parents bereaved by homicide. The data were analyzed using both categorical-content and categorical-form analyses. ResultsThe findings indicated that Muslim parents' meaning-making process involves silencing, which is grounded in their religious background. This process is characterized by a difficulty to accept this loss as God's will, as expected from them by religion, given that it was caused by an intentional act of human violence. Consequently, their global belief meanings are undermined. They, then, yearn for “Qayama” day–the day of judgment. ConclusionsThe findings are discussed in light of Park's religious meaning-making model, highlighting that bereaved Muslim parents' coping process includes an additional challenge related to their religious background. This underscores the need for culturally-sensitive inquiry and spiritually-informed therapy.

How Healthcare Providers Reconcile Bad Things Happening to Good Patients: The Role of Just World Beliefs in Attitudes toward Trauma-Informed Care

ABSTRACT Despite prevalent trauma exposure among patients seeking health care, as well as widespread frameworks for enacting trauma-informed care, the uptake of trauma-informed practices such as trauma screening and referral among health-care providers remains relatively low. The current study sought to assess the roles of health-care providers’ personal histories of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and personal beliefs in the just-world hypothesis in understanding their attitudes toward trauma-informed care. Advanced practice graduate nursing students (N = 180; M age = 34.6 years) completed a self-reported survey assessing their personal history of ACEs, global belief in a just world, and attitudes related to trauma-informed care. Results indicated the relation between providers’ ACEs and attitudes toward trauma-informed care was fully mediated by their beliefs in a just world, such that providers reporting higher ACEs scores also report greater endorsement of attitudes consistent with trauma-informed care due to less belief in a just world. Implications for both health-care providers’ themselves and cultural shifts necessary for provision of trauma-informed health care are discussed.

Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.

Just-word beliefs and community-level abortion stigma: An exploratory survey

ObjectivesThis study aimed to evaluate whether belief in a just world is associated with community-level abortion stigma. Study designFrom December 2020 to June 2021, we conducted a national U.S. survey of 911 adults using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Survey respondents completed both the Community-Level Abortion Stigma Scale and Global Belief in a Just World Scale. We used linear regression to evaluate the association between just-world beliefs, demographic characteristics, and community-level abortion stigma. ResultsThe mean Global Belief in a Just World Scale score was 25.8. The mean Community-Level Abortion Stigma Scale score was 2.6. The strength of just-world beliefs (β = 0.7), male gender (β = 4.1), a history of a previous pregnancy (β = 3.1), post college education (β = 2.8), and strength of religious beliefs (β = 0.3) were associated with higher community-level abortion stigma. Asian race was associated with lower community-level abortion stigma (β = −7.2). ConclusionsAfter controlling for demographic characteristics, strong just-world beliefs were associated with higher community-level abortion stigma. ImplicationsUnderstanding just-world beliefs may provide a potential target for stigma-reduction strategies.

Interactions between the cortical midline structures and sensorimotor network track maladaptive self-beliefs in clinical high risk for psychosis

Individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) report a maladaptive self-concept—with more negative and less positive self-beliefs—linked to clinical symptoms and functional impairment. Alterations have also been reported in brain networks associated with intrinsic (cortical midline structures, CMS) and extrinsic (sensorimotor network, SMN) self-processing. Theoretical accounts of multiple levels of self-experience in schizophrenia suggest that interactions between these networks would be relevant for self-beliefs. This study tested whether self-beliefs related to resting-state functional connectivity within and between the CMS and SMN. Participants were 56 individuals meeting CHR criteria and 59 matched healthy community participants (HC). Pearson correlations examined potential mediators and outcomes. The CHR group reported more negative and less positive self-beliefs. Greater resting-state functional connectivity between the posterior CMS (posterior cingulate cortex) and the SMN was associated with less positive self-beliefs in CHR, but more positive self-beliefs in HC. Attenuated negative symptoms and poorer social functioning were associated with CMS-SMN connectivity (trend level after FDR-correction) and self-beliefs. Reduced connectivity between the left and right PCC was associated with lower positive self-beliefs in CHR, although this effect was specific to very low levels of positive self-beliefs. Left-right PCC connectivity did not correlate with outcomes. Dynamic interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic self-processing supported positive self-beliefs in typically developing youth while undermining positive self-beliefs in CHR youth. Implications are discussed for basic self-fragmentation, narrative self-related metacognition, and global belief updating. Interventions for self-processing may be beneficial in the CHR syndrome.

Identifying Root Causes: Evaluation of a Program to Engage Youth in a Social Justice Approach to Tobacco Control.

Movements designed to engage youth in tobacco control have been an important part of tobacco prevention for decades. Today, young people are increasingly diverse, and their primary issues of concern are gun control, racism, mental health, and climate change. To engage today's young people, tobacco control programs need to draw connections between youth's identities, top issues, and tobacco. UpRISE is a social justice youth tobacco control movement that engages diverse youth in identifying the root causes of youth nicotine use. In 2018-2019, 21 youth-serving organizations and schools hosted youth coalitions. Coalitions engaged in a six-session workbook called "Getting to the root cause," and adults were provided training and reflective supervision. Pre/post surveys with youth participants (n = 180) and end-of-year interviews with adult facilitators (n = 22) were used to assess outcomes. The primary outcomes were supportive adult relationships, youth voice in decision-making, anti-tobacco industry attitudes and beliefs, psychological empowerment, critical consciousness, and global belief in a just world. Quantitative measures of supportive adult relationships, youth voice in decision-making, psychological empowerment, and anti-tobacco industry attitudes and beliefs all increased significantly over time (p < .0001, p < .0001, p < .0001, p = .0034, respectively). Critical consciousness and global belief in a just world did not change significantly. During interviews, adults reported learning how: to engage in youth-adult partnerships, the tobacco industry abused its power, to engage in critical reflection about power. Adults also felt empowered. UpRISE may be a promising approach to increase racially diverse youth's engagement in social justice-oriented tobacco control efforts that advance equity.

The global belief that "life gets better and better": National differences in recollected past, present, and anticipated future life satisfaction around the world, across time, and in relation to societal functioning.

National-level differences in individuals' ratings of their recollected past, current, and anticipated future life satisfaction (LS) were examined using results from two pioneering projects comprising national-level results for 14 countries (Cantril, 1965) and 15 regions of the world (Gallup International Research Institutes & Charles F. Kettering Foundation, 1976; Study 1), as well as sequential results from the Gallup World Poll based on 137 countries representing a broad range of nations from around the world surveyed from 2005 to 2018 (Study 2). Results from both studies revealed a robust belief that "life gets better" over time (i.e., recollected past < current < anticipated future LS) in nations around the world. Such beliefs were examined in relation to objective and subjective indicators of societal-level functioning. Results replicated across studies in showing that nations with less positive societal functioning and prosperity were characterized by less recollected past improvements in LS, and yet greater anticipated future improvements in LS. Results from Study 2 also revealed that such expectations were positively biased compared to changes over time in national levels of LS; further, greater bias was related to less positive societal-level functioning. In conclusion, examining national-level differences in LS from a subjective temporal perspective provides valuable new insights concerning human development and prosperity across countries, over time, and around the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The General Academic Self-Efficacy Scale: Psychometric Properties, Longitudinal Invariance, and Criterion Validity

Academic self-efficacy (ASE) refers to a student’s global belief in his/her ability to master the various academic challenges at university and is an essential antecedent of wellbeing and performance. The five-item General Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (GASE) showed promise as a short and concise measure for overall ASE. However, of its validity and reliability outside of Scandinavia is limited. Therefore, this paper aimed to investigate the psychometric properties, longitudinal invariance, and criterion validity of the GASE within a sample of university students (Time 1: n = 1056 &amp; Time 2: n = 592) in the USA and Western Europe. The results showed that a unidimensional factorial model of overall ASE fitted the data well was reliable and invariant across time. Further, criterion validity was established by finding a positive relationship with task performance at different time stamps. Therefore, the GASE can be used as a valid and reliable measure for general ASE.

Evaluating evidence for a global mindset factor across multiple ability domains

The current studies help to clarify the nature of growth mindsets by evaluating how strongly people hold a global belief that generalizes across multiple ability domains (e.g., math, writing). Study 1 (N = 651) showed that a bifactor model, consisting of a common global belief and beliefs specific to each domain, fit the data reasonably well. Global mindset beliefs and domain-specific mindset beliefs predicted domain-specific outcomes, whereas global mindset more strongly predicted global outcomes than domain-specific factors. Study 2 (N = 1,422) used an augmented bifactor model with newly developed global mindset items that only served as indicators of the global factor. Results showed high convergence between the new global mindset items and the global factor from a bifactor model.

Editorial

Editorial

Coluthur Gopalan. 28 November 1918—3 October 2019

Gopalan was a brilliant medical student. The Bengal famine of 1942 made him decide to devote his career to ‘the investigation and mitigation of the nutrition-related problems of Indians, especially those of the disadvantaged sections’. He was the first Indian to win a Nuffield Foundation research scholarship to study in England in 1946. In less than three years he had earned a PhD as well as a DSc in nutrition. He returned to India and joined the Nutrition Research Laboratory in Coonoor. His studies over the next decade showed that, contrary to the global belief, both kwashiorkor and marasmus were manifestations of protein energy malnutrition. His research studies on improving the nutritional status of pregnant women and children with food supplementation led to the initiation of India's Integrated Child Development Scheme and Mid-day Meal programmes. India's National Anaemia Prophylaxis Programme and Massive Dose Vitamin A Supplementation Programme were also initiated on the basis of the studies he led. As Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research he created institutions to undertake research in the areas of neglected tropical diseases and medical statistics. He initiated the National Talent Search Scheme to ensure adequate human resources for medical research. After he retired, he set up the Nutrition Foundation of India, to continue with policy and operational research studies on the triple burden of malnutrition. He initiated the setting up of the Nutrition Society of India and the Federation of Asian Nutrition Societies to improve networking among nutrition scientists. In reply to a query on his major contributions, he said: ‘I helped to get Nutrition Science in India the recognition it deserved, and I built institutions that will serve the people of India long after my lifetime.’

Role of Information Technology in COVID-19 Vaccination Drive: An Analysis of the COVID-19 Global Beliefs, Behaviors, and Norms Survey.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, information technology has played a critical role in healthcare. A broad spectrum of information technology tools and applications played an essential role to create awareness of the COVID-19 vaccination drive and its health benefits. Research conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in collaboration with information technology platforms like Facebook with inputs from World Health Organization (WHO), John Hopkins University (JHU), and Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) shows that 65.06% of people all over the globe are willing to get vaccinated. Vaccine acceptance depends upon social norms and human behavior. These organizations conducted the global survey in over 60 countries with a sample size of 437,236 responses. The international survey was organized using a pre-registered randomized experiment demonstrating the role of technology in reaching out to people based in diverse communities and evaluating their beliefs, behavior, and social norms. The study shows that vaccine acceptance can vary due to descriptive norms. All the respondents in the study were adults with access to the internet. Moreover, a large proportion of the population thinks that the COVID-19 pandemic is a viable threat to the community and preventive measures need to be taken including vaccination drives to eradicate the menace. The survey consisted of five blocks involving questions related to healthcare, demographics, vaccines, knowledge, and information exposure. Sampling and weighting were done using a pool of 3,000 respondents over two weeks, and weights were provided per respondent to represent the target population as a whole. It reduces the representation error and minimizes non-response biases.

Confronted with Bullying when You Believe in a Just World

Bullying has been recognized as a phenomenon that detrimentally affects the lives of many, and researchers continue to explore its various influences and correlates. We examined the relationship between the global belief in a just world (BJW; a person’s tendency to believe that life is fair and people get what they deserve) and reactions to bullying. Although BJW is undergirded by a justice motive, and although previous research found that global BJW is associated with more negative explicit attitudes toward bullying in the abstract, we hypothesized that strong global BJW beliefs would instead predict more tolerance and less condemnation when participants were presented with specific behaviors that could be construed as bullying. In two vignette-based experiments, global BJW (but not personal BJW), predicted less negative reactions to bullying, and did so regardless of whether the behavior was explicitly labeled as being a case of bullying. Implications of these results are discussed.

Ranking kinematics for revising by contextual information

Probability kinematics is a leading paradigm in probabilistic belief change. It is based on the idea that conditional beliefs should be independent from changes of their antecedents’ probabilities. In this paper, we propose a re-interpretation of this paradigm for Spohn’s ranking functions which we call Generalized Ranking Kinematics as a new principle for iterated belief revision of ranking functions by sets of conditional beliefs with respect to their specific subcontext. By taking into account semantical independencies, we can reduce the complexity of the revision task to local contexts. We show that global belief revision can be set up from revisions on the local contexts via a merging operator. Furthermore, we formalize a variant of the Ramsey-Test based on the idea of local contexts which connects conditional and propositional revision in a straightforward way. We extend the belief change methodology of c-revisions to strategic c-revisions which will serve as a proof of concept.

Belief in Just World and Life Satisfaction in Undergraduate Students: Cross Cultural Study in Indonesia and China

 The purpose of this research was to compare cross-culturally between belief in a just world and life satisfaction among students in China and Indonesia. Subjects in this study were 194 students in China and 112 students in Indonesia who vary in religion, race, and study field. This research used three scales to collect the data, the Global Belief in Just World Scale, Personal Belief in Just World Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. The correlation test showed that for Indonesian subjects, the strong correlation is between Personal Belief in Just World and Life Satisfaction (r = 0.330, p = 0.000). And for China subjects, the strong correlation is between Personal Belief in Just World and Life Satisfaction (r = 0.412, p = 0.000). From the comparative test, Global Belief in Just World in Indonesia subjects was higher than in China subjects (h 2 = 0.066, p = 0.000). A more detailed explanation will be provided in this paper. Â