Persistence Of Beliefs Research Articles

СТРАТЕГІЇ ПЕРЕКОНАННЯ У ФРАНЦУЗЬКОМУ УЛЬТРАПРАВОМУ ДИСКУРСІ

The paper presents a study of the persuasion strategies in French ultra-right discourse. Persuasion strategies are considered with the aim of researching the construction of the most effective political communication as an instrument of pressure and management of public opinion. The article deals with a linear communication model, which is based on the process of unilaterally transferring information from the speaker to the addressee. This model of information transmission is widespread in the media and aims to directly influence the addressee for the sake of forming persistent beliefs. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the work of scientists devoted to the study of general theory of discourse and political discourse. The methodological basis of the work was the techniques and methods of researching political discourse in the framework of a consistent study of its specific features. The author analyzes the discursive strategies and tactics used in the French ultra-right discourse with the aim of influencing the addressee. The essence of speech strategies and rhetoric of the right forces, as well as the range of linguistic means of speech influence and their implementation by these political forces are considered. The main directions of the essential characteristics of persuasion strategies in contemporary French ultra-right discourse are investigated. Ultra-right groups have a large number of supporters in France, whom they attract to their ranks through print and online publications, so consideration of persuasion strategies in French ultra-right discourse to ensure a positive impact on the addressee is available over time. "Ultra-right discourse" refers to the discourse of the ultra-right, often very small groups, whose actions are violent. The term "ultra-right discourse" is intended to differentiate the discourse of radical and "non-parliamentary" groups from the discourse of far-right law-abiding groups. The role of ultra-right discourse in modern French society is revealed, in particular, the manipulative effect of ultra-right political discourse on the addressee is considered.

Magical Potential: Why Magic Performances Should be Used to Explore the Psychological Factors Contributing to Human Belief Formation.

Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and more individualized magical belief systems (e.g., paranormal beliefs, spirituality). Scholars regularly link the occurrence of beliefs to individuals' cognitive and affective ways of informationprocessing. For magical beliefs in particular, we expect children to endorse them. When reaching adulthood, however, individuals should have abandoned magical beliefs, and become pragmatic, sceptical, critical and rational thinkers. The reality is, a large proportion of the adult population can be described as magical thinkers, or report having had magical experiences, even in the recent past. Moreover, psychological research in adults shows a large range of magical beliefs, which correlate with particular psychological processing biases (e.g., repetition avoidance, seeing signal in noise). Unfortunately, these correlational studies do not tell us whether such psychological processing biases precede magical beliefs or whether they result from these magical beliefs. Knowing the direction of such relationships is key to understand which psychological biases might contribute to adult belief formation (or the persistence of beliefs from childhood). To test such causal relationships, we started to systematically apply an experimental approach in which people are exposed to anomalous events. Such a central event allows before-after comparisons of psychological biases. First empirical results confirmed that the use of magic performances, particularly when of paranormal nature, results in an important amount of paranormal explanations. Pre-existing beliefs enhanced this explanation bias. These results show how easily naïve observers can be "tricked" into unsubstantiated beliefs.

Negative world views after trauma: Neurophysiological evidence for negative expectancies.

Negative views of both the self and the world are commonly seen in individuals who have suffered psychological trauma. These negative cognitions are thought to be significant as they are likely to play a critical role in furthering, if not promoting, other symptoms and exacerbating the dysfunction sometimes seen after a traumatic event. This has led to the inclusion of "persistent negative beliefs and expectations about oneself or the world" in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Although there is considerable self-report and behavioral evidence for negative biases after trauma, there is less concurrent neurophysiological data. This study used the N400, an event-related potential sensitive to semantic expectancies, to assess negative expectations in a trauma sample. In this study, 39 participants completed an N400 task in which they read ambiguous sentence stems that ended either with a positive final word (Things will turn out . . . fine) or a negative final word (Things will turn out . . . badly). The authors predicted that those trauma survivors with negative cognitions (as measured by the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory [PTCI]: Foa et al., 1999) would show N400 amplitudes indicating expectancies for negative endings. Augmenting the previous self-report data, this would provide evidence for negative expectancies that are fairly early and relatively automatic. N400 amplitudes to negative sentence endings were significantly related to negative views of the world as measured by the PTCI. This suggests that negative world views in trauma survivors have demonstrable neurophysiological correlates and impact on expectations in ambiguous situations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Relationship between intake of fruit separately from vegetables and triglycerides - A meta-analysis

High intake of fruit and vegetables is recommended for cardiovascular health. However, there have been persistent beliefs that fruits having high concentrations of fructose elevate the level of triglycerides (TG) in blood unlike vegetables. This meta-analysis aims to clarify the relationship between fruit intake and TG or hypertriglyceridemia. Electronic literature searches were conducted for observational studies that investigated the relationship between fruit intake and hypertriglyceridemia or intervention studies that investigated the effect of increasing fruit intake on TG. Each effect size was pooled with an inverse-variance method. Five cross-sectional studies and only 2 intervention studies were eligible. The pooled odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval (CI)) of the 5 cross-sectional studies for the highest vs. the lowest fruit intake category was 0.79 (0.72-0.87). In these studies, the pooled OR for the highest vs. the lowest vegetable intake category was not significant (OR=0.92; 95% CI, (0.82-1.03)). A linear dose-response association was observed between increases in fruit intake and ORs for hypertriglyceridemia; the OR (95% CI) for an incrementally increased intake of fruit by 1 serving/day was 0.91 (0.84-0.98). This meta-analysis suggests that high intake of fruit but not vegetables is inversely associated with hypertriglyceridemia. More trials are needed to clarify whether increasing fruit intake would reduce the level of TG and/or incident hypertriglyceridemia.

Impact of Lingonberry Supplementation on High-fat Diet-induced Metabolic Syndrome and Hyperlipidemia

High intake of fruit and vegetables is recommended for cardiovascular health. However, there have been persistent beliefs that fruits having high concentrations of fructose elevate the level of triglycerides (TG) in blood unlike vegetables. This meta-analysis aims to clarify the relationship between fruit intake and TG or hypertriglyceridemia.Electronic literature searches were conducted for observational studies that investigated the relationship between fruit intake and hypertriglyceridemia or intervention studies that investigated the effect of increasing fruit intake on TG. Each effect size was pooled with an inverse-variance method.Five cross-sectional studies and only 2 intervention studies were eligible. The pooled odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval (CI)) of the 5 cross-sectional studies for the highest vs. the lowest fruit intake category was 0.79 (0.72–0.87). In these studies, the pooled OR for the highest vs. the lowest vegetable intake category was not significant (OR = 0.92; 95% CI, (0.82–1.03)). A linear dose–response association was observed between increases in fruit intake and ORs for hypertriglyceridemia; the OR (95% CI) for an incrementally increased intake of fruit by 1 serving/day was 0.91 (0.84–0.98).This meta-analysis suggests that high intake of fruit but not vegetables is inversely associated with hypertriglyceridemia. More trials are needed to clarify whether increasing fruit intake would reduce the level of TG and/or incident hypertriglyceridemia.

Review of Issues About Classical Change Scores: A Multilevel Modeling Perspective on Some Enduring Beliefs.

Change scores obtained in pretest-posttest designs are important for evaluating treatment effectiveness and for assessing change of individual test scores in psychological research. However, over the years the use of change scores has raised much controversy. In this article, from a multilevel perspective, we provide a structured treatise on several persistent negative beliefs about change scores and show that these beliefs originated from the confounding of the effects of within-person change on change-score reliability and between-person change differences. We argue that psychometric properties of change scores, such as reliability and measurement precision, should be treated at suitable levels within a multilevel framework. We show that, if examined at the suitable levels with such a framework, the negative beliefs about change scores can be renounced convincingly. Finally, we summarize the conclusions about change scores to dispel the myths and to promote the potential and practical usefulness of change scores.

SYSTEMIC, PHASED APPROACH TO THE APPLICATION OF EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES ON STUDENTS IN STUDYING BIOLOGY

Здійснено теоретичний аналіз психолого-педагогічної та методичної літератури, які розкривають застосування виховних впливів на учнів у процесі вивчення біології. Розкрито системне, поетапне, практичне застосування виховних впливів на уроках біології, спрямованих на активізацію пізнавальної діяльності учнів, що забезпечить підвищення інтересу до навколишнього середовища і цим самим бажання отримати глибші знання і сформувати певні переконання природоохоронної спрямованості. Адже одним із пріоритетів педагогічної діяльності вчителя є формування стійких переконань в учнів, зокрема: формування моральних, етичних, естетичних переконань; бажання до емпатії, нетерпимості до проявів вандалізму стосовно навколишнього середовища. Розглянуто доцільність поетапного застосування виховних впливів на учнів на різних етапах організації процесу вивчення біології, наведено методику поетапного формування морально-етичних норм, естетичних і екологічних переконань. Також проведено експериментальну перевірку ефективності послідовного, системного поетапного застосування виховного впливу на учнів у процесі вивчення біології у напрямі формування позитивного ставлення до природи та пізнавальної, творчої діяльності у соціальній та природоохоронній сферах.

The Low and Narrow: A Preliminary Test of the Association Between Depressive Symptoms and Deficits in Producing Divergent Inferences

Depression is associated with biased interpretations and beliefs that are resistant to change. This kind of cognitive rigidity may depend on two distinct factors—a reduced ability for processing information that conflicts with these interpretations and beliefs and a reduced ability for generating alternative representations. Although depressive symptoms are typically not associated with deficits in common divergent thinking tasks, these tasks may not be sensitive or specific enough to detect the rigid cognition associated with depression. Accordingly, a novel task was developed to assess divergent thinking in line with the level of construal and thematic contents typical of depressive cognition (the Divergent Inference Task—DIT). In a preliminary investigation using a nonclinical sample, depressive symptoms were correlated with deficits in producing divergent interpretations for realistic scenarios using the DIT. This finding may represent an important psychological mechanism that contributes to the persistence of biased interpretations and beliefs in depression.

SAĞLIK YÖNETİMİ ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN MUHASEBE DERSİNE KARŞI TUTUMLARININ BAŞARI DÜZEYLERİNE ETKİSİ ÜZERİNE BİR ARAŞTIRMA

The aim of this study was determine Cumhuriyet University Department of Health Management section porcelain enamel license training is a students ' attitudes towards accounting courses. Attitude; is the positive or negative attitude of the individual towards an object, situation, or being dealt with, and the persistent beliefs and emotions. It can be an important factor in increasing the quality of education by the teaching staff knowing what their attitudes towards students and their other students in social life are and how to measure them. Moreover, positive attitudes towards the course will bring success with education and professional life, as attitudes are transformed into behavior. This research has been chosen because of the fact that there are deficiencies in the field of health management with regard to this issue. In the first part of the study, literature on health management, accounting education and attitude was given. Later, researches related to the subject were given. In the last section, findings and conclusions are included. Electronic survey research method identifier. In the study, the questionnaire scale used by Ertugrul and Ozdemir (2014) was used to measure the accounting attitude of the students and the Cronbach alpha coefficient of scale was determined as 0,960. Questionnaire scale; 22 items in the dimension of reluctance-urgency, 6 items in the necessity dimension and 12 items in the will-love dimension in total 40 items. The research universe of 2017-2018 academic year undergraduate field of Cumhuriyet University Faculty of Health Sciences of Health Institutions Management 490 students section constitute. The selection of sampling stratified sampling method was used. Study of 260 students have participated, 135 of the participants are primary education; and 125 is the secondary education student. 260 students participated in the study, the average grade point average of the students who participated in the study is 2,61. As a result of the research, it was seen that the students who participated in the survey were partially aware of the necessity of the accounting course and the students who were in the department had a positive attitude towards the course. At the same time, it was determined that attitudes towards the course affected the achievement levels.

Civic Capital and Service Outsourcing: Evidence from Italy

This paper studies whether civic capital (those persistent shared beliefs and values that help a group overcome the free rider problem in the pursuit of socially valuable activities) acts an effective restraint against opportunistic behavior in transactions by looking at the firm-level degree of service outsourcing in Italy. Our results show that firms tend to outsource more services in areas where civic capital is higher. We claim that the rise in the propensity to engage in transactions with outside service suppliers stems from the decrease in opportunism between the parties involved. We consider a dynamic specification which allows to disentangle state dependence of service out- sourcing from firm-level heterogeneity, and we use historical instruments to address the potential endogeneity of civic capital.

Framework Theory of Conceptual Change to Interpret Undergraduate Engineering Students' Explanations About Mechanics of Materials Concepts

AbstractBackgroundConceptual change is a process in which an individual's understanding and the basis of this understanding change over time. Vosniadou's framework theory explains conceptual change in terms of how students learn to relate the observable and unobservable in everyday phenomena. As a result, courses that relate physical phenomena to complex abstractions – such as Mechanics of Materials – are useful spaces for exploring conceptual change.PurposeThis paper leverages Vosniadou's framework theory of conceptual change to explore students' reasoning and to identify trends about their understanding of fundamental concepts of mechanics of materials.Design/MethodThis research is based on the qualitative analysis of semi‐structured interviews with ninety engineering undergraduate students enrolled in a Mechanics of Materials course. Interviews were qualitatively analyzed to capture students' understanding of mechanics of materials concepts under different loading scenarios.ResultsOur results found two common persistent beliefs in student reasoning in both the axial and bending load cases: that shear and normal stress depend on (a) the direction and (b) the location of an applied load. We propose that students' “nonscientific” beliefs are part of an intermediate, synthetic model of conceptual understanding created as students assimilate their presuppositions of mechanics of materials with newly acquired information based on the scientific concepts.ConclusionsStudents form naïve conceptual beliefs based on their experiences with loading scenarios that impede their abilities to more effectively assimilate new concepts into their current framework theories. A better understanding of student reasoning and what influences it can inform instructional techniques to help students develop science‐based reasoning in mechanics of materials.

Industry Gender Imprinting and New Venture Creation: The Liabilities of Women’s Leagues in the Sports Industry

This paper examines how industry gender imprinting—the persistence of cultural values, beliefs, norms, and orientations associated with masculinity or femininity—influences new ventures. Our investigation of women’s leagues in the male-dominated sports industry reveals how gender imprinting negatively affects new ventures’ endeavors through three liabilities: identity, conformity, and differentiation. Our findings shed light on the challenges new ventures not aligned with the industry imprint encounter to obtaining material and symbolic support. We contribute to theory by advancing knowledge on how industry-specific sociocultural attributes influence entrepreneurial efforts, and to practice by suggesting how to overcome cultural roadblocks in gendered industries.

A Vibrant Autistic Aesthetic and the Limits of Art Brut

The article proposes that paintings by Jessica Park and Seth Chwast share an aesthetic. Like work by other autist artists, many of their pieces are precise and pattern-focused; yet, both artists present familiar scenes using bold colors that may appear non-representational. This strategy may seem to affiliate them with the category of art brut, but Chwast’s and Park’s paintings explicitly reject this label—often assigned to art by autists—by demonstrating an intimate connection to each artist’s environment. In the process, their work exposes the instability of distinctions between reality and illusion, thereby contradicting outdated yet persistent beliefs about autism. These paintings call into question the use of autism as part of art brut’s theoretical frame, suggesting that the category needs to be substantially revised or retired as one response to the persistence of outdated attitudes toward autists, particularly in France.

Out-of-the-Blue: Depressive Symptoms are Associated with Deficits in Processing Inferential Expectancy-Violations Using a Novel Cognitive Rigidity Task

Rigid cognition is frequently cited as a plausible maintenance or risk factor for depression. However, most performance-based measures of cognitive rigidity associated with depression offer poor ecological validity, produce mixed findings, and afford little in the way of therapeutic application. In order to establish a more useful and relevant performance-based measure of cognitive rigidity in depression, we developed a novel task that probes a rigidity process using stimuli highly relevant to the level of construal, the thematic content, and the rhetorical mode of depressotypic thinking. The task consists of a set of narrative vignettes that contain an expectancy-violation that is incompatible with an initially-established interpretation. As hypothesized, depressive symptoms were associated with reduced ability to update interpretations. This finding was independent of the valence of the expectancy-violation (i.e., was not merely a negativity bias), and was significant after controlling for basic set-shifting ability, intelligence measures, working memory, and other potential confounds. The novel Contingent Inference Task is a promising approach that may probe a more ecologically and etiologically relevant form of cognitive rigidity in depression than other related performance-based rigidity tasks. This rigidity process may underlie the persistence of biased beliefs in depression, and represent a new therapeutic target.

Disclosure Dynamics and Investor Learning

This paper examines whether investor learning about profitability (i.e., the mean of earnings distribution) leads to persistence in disclosure decisions. A repeated single-period model shows that persistent investor beliefs about profitability lead to persistent disclosure decisions. Using earnings forecast data, I structurally estimate the model and perform several counterfactual analyses. I find that, when investors are assumed to know profitability, the persistence of management forecast decisions significantly declines by 17% to 27%, and 24% of firms would have disclosed differently, resulting in 3.9% net change in the amount of information (i.e., posterior variance) provided to the capital market. Collectively, the results indicate the importance of learning profitability in understanding disclosure decisions and the capital market consequences of disclosures.

RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AS EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATIONS

AbstractScholars employing an evolutionary approach to the study of religion and religious beliefs search for ultimate explanations of the origin, propagation, and persistence of religious beliefs. This quest often pairs in debate two opposing perspectives: the adaptationist and “by‐product” explanations of religion and religious beliefs. The majority of scholars prefer the by‐product approach, which is agnostic and even doubtful of the usefulness of religious beliefs. Despite this pervasive negativity, it seems unwarranted to deny the great usefulness of religious beliefs—particularly concerning their past utility. Instead, adaptationist explanations of religion and religious beliefs must be re‐established as interesting and useful approaches to the study of religious beliefs.

The Social Determinants of Conspiratorial Ideation

Scholars have recently become increasingly interested in understanding the prevalence and persistence of conspiratorial beliefs among the public as recent research has shown such beliefs to be both widespread and to have deleterious effects on the political process. This article seeks to develop a sociological understanding of the structural conditions that are associated with conspiratorial belief. Using aggregate Google search data to measure public interest in two popular political conspiracy theories, the findings indicate that social conditions associated with threat and insecurity, including unemployment, changes in partisan control of government, and demographic changes, are associated with increased conspiratorial ideation.

The More Educated, the More Engaged? An Analysis of Social Capital and Education

Social capital can be understood as network-based civic engagement, based on reciprocity and trust. This sociological approach, however, is faced with problems when assuming network-based social capital as a stock of capital. Any form of capital should have a positive economic payoff, should be measurable, and should define the mechanisms through which social capital can be accumulated and depreciated (Solow, 1995). To meet these criteria, we refer to social capital as “persistent and shared beliefs and values that help a group overcome the free rider problem in the pursuit of socially valuable activities” (Guiso et al., 2010). In this study, we assess the role of education as a potential accumulation mechanism of civic awareness and social trust. We implement a pseudo-panel data approach to identify, specifically in Italy, the effect of education on social capital. The findings show that participation in education is likely to foster higher levels of social capital, understood as a culture-based concept of civic engagement. In Italy, we also observe heterogeneous effects depending on the geographical location along the north-south axis. The Islands and the South, geographical areas in which levels of social capital are typically lower, are the areas where education shows a higher impact on civic awareness and social trust. We discuss and substantiate the results in terms of education policy implications.

Witchcraft Beliefs as a Cultural Legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Evidence from Two Continents

This paper argues that the historical slave trade contributed to the propagation of persistent witchcraft beliefs on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and establishes two key empirical patterns. First, it shows that in Sub-Saharan Africa, representatives of ethnic groups which were more heavily exposed to the Atlantic slave trade in the past are more likely to believe in witchcraft today, thus establishing a link between historical trauma and contemporary culture. Second, exploring the role of the slave trade in cultural transmission across continents, this paper finds that Afro-descendants in modern Latin America are substantially more likely to believe in witchcraft relative to other ancestral groups. Moreover, accounting for ancestry and other relevant factors, people residing in regions historically more reliant on African slave labor are also more likely to be witchcraft believers. These findings support ethnographic narratives on the connection between slave trade, slavery, and the entrenchment of witchcraft beliefs and shed light on the nature of these beliefs and related practices as a cultural framework for interpreting misfortune and a mechanism of enslavement in local communities.

“What I believe is true”: Belief-confirming reasoning bias in social anxiety disorder

Background and objectivesResearch shows that people tend to consider believable conclusions as valid and unbelievable conclusions as invalid (belief bias). When applied to anxiogenic beliefs, this belief bias could well hinder the correction of dysfunctional convictions. Previous work has shown that high socially anxious students indeed display such fear-confirming, belief biased, reasoning. A critical next question is whether these findings translate to a clinical population of people with social anxiety disorder (SAD). We test whether (i) patients with SAD show belief bias with regard to SAD-relevant themes, (ii) this belief bias is specific for SAD patients or can also be found in panic disorder (PD) patients, (iii) differential belief bias effects in SAD are restricted to social anxiety concerns or are also evident in the context of reasoning with neutral themes. Method45 SAD patients, 24 PD patients, and 45 non-symptomatic controls (NSCs) completed a syllogistic belief bias task with SAD-relevant and neutral content. ResultsSAD patients displayed belief bias for social anxiety related materials, while the PD group and the NSC group did not. Yet, the difference between SAD and PD was not significant. All groups showed similar belief bias effects for neutral content. LimitationsContent of the belief bias task was not tailored to idiosyncratic beliefs. The study lacked power to detect medium or small differences. ConclusionsSAD patients showed concern-congruent belief biased interference effects when judging the logical validity of social anxiety relevant syllogisms. Such concern-relevant belief bias may contribute to the persistence of anxiogenic beliefs.