Social Psychological Studies Research Articles

Expecting Refugees in Latvia: Negative Stereotyping

AbstractIn response to a dramatic increase of illegal immigration in the European Union, in the fall of 2015 Latvia agreed to accept several hundreds of refugees on its soil. Nevertheless, Latvian society remains very sceptic about these plans, and reportedly demonstrates strong negative attitudes towards refugees. According to the survey, by the end of 2015 the factual experience of interaction with refugees did not exceed ten per cent of Latvian population. This suggests that most of the real attitudes are formed by mass media and other socialisation agents. In order to uncover the nature of these feelings, the present study has been designed to make an in-depth social psychological study on attitudes. One thousand Latvian residents evenly representing Latvia’s demography have taken part in this study. A modified Stephan’s Prejudicial Attitude Survey has been used to study prejudice. Negative stereotyping represents one of the emotional components of attitudes towards refugees. The results illustrate the palette of emotions and the level of their expression in Latvian society, and highlight the feelings, which may shape the identity of the in-group.

Creation and Application of a Replicable Analytic Method to Determine Attitudes and Beliefs of Undergraduate Science Professors Toward the Discipline of Education

Detailed here is the creation and application of a replicable method bricolage that brings together Discourse Analysis, discourse analysis, and the theory of reasoned action to examine attitudes and beliefs of university science professors toward the discipline of education. This method used a two-phase method for analysis. The first phase looked for phrases that could be defined as either an attitude or a belief based on definitions taken from the social psychology and communication studies literature. The second phase interpreted the overall data to explore the influences on the formation of the attitudes and beliefs as well as to support or refute the findings from Phase 1. The need for a replicable Discourse Analysis method is apparent in the education literature, as is a solid definition of what constitutes an attitude or a belief. The method outlined here provides good definitions for attitudes and beliefs, a method for extracting both constructs from the data, and incorporates an internal crystallization process for looking at and comparing emergent themes from both phases of analysis.

Economic Evaluations, Procedural Fairness, and Satisfaction with Democracy

Although public support for political authorities, institutions, and even regimes is affected by the delivery of positive economic outcomes, we know that judgments on authorities are also made on the basis of several other aspects that fall into the general theme of “procedural fairness.” So far, most of the literature examining satisfaction with democracy has, from this point of view, focused on the direct effects of both economic and procedural fairness indicators or evaluations. This study takes as its starting point a large number of studies in social psychology showing that procedural fairness moderates the effects of outcome favorability in the explanation of citizens’ reactions to authorities. It expands those findings to the macro-political level, using representative samples of European populations in twenty-nine countries. It reveals that the general depiction of satisfaction with the way democracies work in practice as a fundamentally “performance-driven attitude” needs to qualified: economic evaluations matter, but they do not matter in the same way in all contexts and for all people, with procedural fairness playing a relevant moderating role in this respect.

English as the language of marketspeak

The ubiquitous spread of English is vividly observed in local linguistic landscapes and urban spaces around the world, and Turkey is no exception. Emerging as abona fideline of inquiry at the nexus of sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, geography and media studies (Sebba, 2010), linguistic landscaping examines the dynamic relationship of English vis-à-vis the local languages, and documents, analyzes and interprets the attributes, patterns, characteristics, meanings and the creative uses of English in such domains as advertising (Kelly-Holmes, 2005; Vettorel, 2013) and shop signs (MacGregor, 2003; Ong, Ghesquière & Serwe, 2013; Schlick, 2002). These studies provide contextualized accounts of language contact situated in local sociolinguistic contexts and contribute to the representation of reflections from various parts of the world (e.g. see Backhaus (2007) and MacGregor (2003) forJapan; McArthur (2000) forSwitzerland and Sweden; Griffin (2004) and Ross (1997) for Italy; Schlick (2002) for Austria, Italy and Slovenia; Dimova (2007) for Macedonia; Hasanova (2010) for Uzbekistan; Ong, Ghesquière & Serwe (2013) for Singapore; El-Yasin & Mahadin (1996) for Jordan; Wang (2013) for China; Ben Said (2010) for Tunisia; Schlick (2003) for Slovenia, Austria, Italy, and the UK; Stewart & Fawcett (2004) for Portugal; Thonus (1991) for Brazil; and Baumgardner (2006) for Mexico).

The “true” indirect effect won't (always) stand up: When and why reverse mediation testing fails

Many social psychological studies aim to test whether an independent variable (X) affects a dependent variable (Y) via one (or more) intervening variable(s) or "mediator(s)" (M). One way to test such a mediation model (X➔M➔Y) is to manipulate X, measure both M and Y, and test statistically whether the indirect effect of X on Y via M is significantly different from zero. However, since the causal order between M and Y is unclear, alternative models (such as X➔Y➔M) are also compatible with the data. Scholars have argued that comparing such models statistically against each other can help decide which model is “correct.” In the present article, we scrutinize the tenability of this “reverse mediation testing” approach via Monte Carlo simulations. Our findings show that reverse mediation testing often fails—especially when the mediator is measured less reliably than the dependent variable.

Seventy years of social psychology: A cultural and personal critique

This paper traces some salient aspects of my research career, focusing largely on work in West Africa. From this lessons are drawn about the shortcomings of social psychology, especially in its laboratory version. It tends to tacitly ignore the effects of cultural influences, assuming that its findings are universally valid. Studies are mainly conducted with adults, generally college students, who are unrepresentative even of the general population of the United States where the bulk of social psychological studies are concentrated. This is justified in terms an alleged ‘psychic unity’. Social psychology pays little attention to the processes whereby children become socialized into particular cultures, which then governs their social behaviour. Methods are usually formal, and observational ones are eschewed, so that research takes place in artificial setting. This brings me to the almost complete absence of links with cognate disciplines, notably anthropology, which could greatly enrich social psychology. Suggestions are made for more wide-ranging approaches which would overcome the aridity of a great deal of current experimental social psychological research.

Memory and connection: Remembering the past and imagining the future in individuals, groups, and cultures

Contemporary memory research has benefited from the contributions of researchers in a broad range of disciplines. Neuroscientists have identified the cellular mechanisms of memory and brain networks that support various kinds of memory processes; psychologists have characterized component processes of memory and developed detailed models of their properties and interactions; historians, sociologists, and other scholars have analyzed how memory shapes the identity of groups and societies. Although it is difficult to specify a single idea or approach that all of these diverse approaches share, one theme common to them is that memory is a dynamic, constructive process that reflects the goals and biases of individuals and groups, rather than a static or literal reproduction of past experiences. This general perspective dates at least to the French sociologist and philosopher Maurice Halbwachs (1925) in his pioneering treatment of collective memory, Les cadres sociaux de la memoire, and to the British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1932) in his classic monograph, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, and has assumed increasing importance during recent years in multiple research areas. The view that memory is a dynamic construction led Halbwachs, Bartlett, and many others to ask questions about the functions that memory serves, in part because understanding how we use memory should provide insights into why it is that memory operates in a constructive manner that is sometimes prone to error and distortion, rather than as a static and literal reproduction that is never mistaken (cf. Neisser, 1967, 2008; Newman and Lindsay, 2009; Ross and Wilson, 2003; Schacter, 2001). These characteristics of memory are strongly evident in the recollections of individuals, as demonstrated both in laboratory studies and in everyday life, where phenomena such as mistaken eyewitness recollections provide dramatic reminders of the fallibility of memory. But they are also evident in the memories of groups and cultures, where collective memories of past events may be shaped to serve the needs of the present.

Support for Socialist Policies: The Ideological Logic of Everyday Practices

To better understand why individuals come to support economic policies that increase inequalities, we suggest a more expansive understanding of ideology. A broad understanding of ideology predicts that daily engagement with the material world will produce certain narratives about the self and the obstacles faced by people. We review studies on child-rearing practices and social psychological studies on diverging understandings of the self that highlight the contrasting narratives of working and middle class people. We argue that these different narratives play a role in explaining why individuals come to support certain economic policies. This more expansive understanding of the concept of ideology can help researchers trace the links between material conditions, ideological narratives, and support for socialist or capitalist economic policies, heeding Lott's (2015) call for a structural analysis.

A Neural Basis of Facial Action Recognition in Humans.

Computational models and studies in cognitive and social psychology propound that visual recognition of facial expressions requires an intermediate step to identify visible facial changes caused by the movement of specific facial muscles. Because facial expressions are indeed created by moving one's facial muscles, it is logical to assume that our visual system solves this inverse problem. Here, using an innovative machine learning method and neuroimaging data, we identify for the first time a brain region responsible for the recognition of actions associated with specific facial muscles. Furthermore, this representation is preserved across subjects. Our machine learning analysis does not require mapping the data to a standard brain and may serve as an alternative to hyperalignment.

Brookes, G., Pooley, J. A., & Earnest J. (2015). Terrorism, Trauma and Psychology: A multilevel victim perspective of the Bali bombings. New York, NY: Routledge.

Dedicated to the victims of the 2002 Bali bombings, Terrorism, Trauma and Psychology: A multilevel victim perspective of the Bali bombings provides a comprehensive insight into the dimensionality of the effects experienced by those involved in terrorist attacks: victims, their family members, and volunteer and professional emergency responders. Intended as an essential reading for scholars in the fields of social and clinical psychology, victimology, and terrorist studies, this book is also a good background reading for those willing to learn how the Bali bombings of 2002 rank on the global scale of terrorist attacks.

The Relation between Perceived Social Support and Anxiety in Patients under Hemodialysis.

IntroductionThe increase in the number of patients under hemodialysis treatment is a universal problem. With regard to the fact that there have been few social-psychological studies conducted on patients under hemodialysis treatment, the current study was conducted to investigate anxiety and perceived social support and the relation between them among these patients.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted on 126 patients under hemodialysis treatment in Isfahan in 2012. After randomly selecting a hospital with a hemodialysis ward, purposive sampling was conducted. Data collection tools included state-trait anxiety and perceived social support inventory. The data were analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient.ResultsAmong the participants, 68.3% received average perceived social support. In addition, perceiving the tangible dimension of support was lower compared to other dimensions (Mean 40.02). Level of trait and state anxiety (65 and 67.5%) of over half of the participants was average. There was in inverse relationship between state and trait anxiety and total perceived social support and emotional and information dimensions (r = −0.340, r = −0.229). State and trait anxiety had the highest relation with emotional and information dimension of social support, respectively.ConclusionPatients under hemodialysis treatment suffer from numerous psychological and social problems. Low awareness and emotional problems result in the increase of anxiety and reduction of perceived social support. Reduction of social support has negative effect on treatment outcomes.

Design approaches to experimental mediation

Identifying causal mechanisms has become a cornerstone of experimental social psychology, and editors in top social psychology journals champion the use of mediation methods, particularly innovative ones when possible (e.g. Halberstadt, 2010, Smith, 2012). Commonly, studies in experimental social psychology randomly assign participants to levels of the independent variable and measure the mediating and dependent variables, and the mediator is assumed to causally affect the dependent variable. However, participants are not randomly assigned to levels of the mediating variable(s), i.e., the relationship between the mediating and dependent variables is correlational. Although researchers likely know that correlational studies pose a risk of confounding, this problem seems forgotten when thinking about experimental designs randomly assigning participants to levels of the independent variable and measuring the mediator (i.e., “measurement-of-mediation” designs). Experimentally manipulating the mediator provides an approach to solving these problems, yet these methods contain their own set of challenges (e.g., Bullock, Green, & Ha, 2010). We describe types of experimental manipulations targeting the mediator (manipulations demonstrating a causal effect of the mediator on the dependent variable and manipulations targeting the strength of the causal effect of the mediator) and types of experimental designs (double randomization, concurrent double randomization, and parallel), provide published examples of the designs, and discuss the strengths and challenges of each design. Therefore, the goals of this paper include providing a practical guide to manipulation-of-mediator designs in light of their challenges and encouraging researchers to use more rigorous approaches to mediation because manipulation-of-mediator designs strengthen the ability to infer causality of the mediating variable on the dependent variable.

Krachtige taal

Abstract Powerful language: A literature review on language intensity in four research fields In recent decades, language intensity, intensification and intensifiers are studied in different research fields: in descriptive linguistics, evaluative literature, social psychology and text analytical discourse studies. However, questions raise about the interpretations researchers in those fields have regarding language intensity: their concepts are diverse. First, it is questionable what kind of utterances are strengthened through language intensity: evaluative or descriptive utterances. Secondly, there are differences between the studies whether language intensity only contain strengthening or also weakening elements. Thirdly, the amount in which the meaning of an utterance changes through language intensity is debatable. Lastly, language intensity studies differ in the linguistic elements that are considered as intensifying elements. In this literature review, the research traditions are compared: how is language intensification studied in various fields, where do they contribute and where are the bottlenecks? This article concludes with a proposal for a unified approach to language intensity, intensification and intensifiers as a stylistic phenomenon, in order to carry out more systematic research on this topic in the future.

The Asymmetry Bias in Me, We–Others Distance Ratings. The Role of Social Stereotypes

Studies in cognitive and social psychology have revealed that the distance from X to Y may be estimated as shorter or longer than the same distance from Y to X. Results showed that this judgment depended on particular properties of compared objects and a reference point in social comparisons (Holyoak and Mah, 1982; Codol, 1987; Kaminska-Feldman, 1991, 2012; Arcuri and Serino, 1992; Hurtig et al., 1993; Hoorens, 1995; Otten and Van Der Pligt, 1996; Eiser et al., 2001). A similar type of illusion—called the asymmetry effect—was found in studies concerning diverse objects, including numbers or geometrical figures (Rosch, 1975), countries (Tversky, 1977) or self—others comparisons (Codol, 1984, 1993). Moreover, analogous asymmetry was displayed in estimations of psychological similarities between objects as in ratings of physical distances between objects (Codol, 1984, 1985). Thus, the asymmetry effect seems to be a universal phenomenon. The current focus concerns explications of the asymmetry effects in the self—others physical distance ratings. The main question raised is: what are the determinants of the asymmetry effects? We attempt to argue that the asymmetry in the self—other(s) distance ratings bias can be due to the self being a cognitive prototype in social perception or to the cognitive stereotypes of the other(s).

Первая студенческая конференция памяти М.Ю. Кондратьева «Социальная психология: вопросы теории и практики»

This report gives a survey on the First students’ conference in memory of M.Y. Kon- dratyev “Social Psychology: Theory and Practice”. The conference demonstrated a number of best works by students at bachelor and master level, which were done in accordance with classical national tradition in social psychology studies. Thematically the conference spreads to such topics as: psychology of small groups, social psychol- ogy of an individual, ethnic psychology, social psychology of education, psychology of management, leadership psychology, family social psychology, as well as a number of practical socio-psychological aspects.

Social Psychology and Noninvasive Electrical Stimulation

Abstract. Social neuroscience and psychology have made substantial advances in the last few decades. Nonetheless, the field has relied mostly on behavioral, imaging, and other correlational research methods. Here we argue that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an effective and relevant technique to be used in this field of research, allowing for the establishment of more causal brain-behavior relationships than can be achieved with most of the techniques used in this field. We review relevant brain stimulation-aided research in the fields of social pain, social interaction, prejudice, and social decision-making, with a special focus on tDCS. Despite the fact that the use of tDCS in Social Neuroscience and Psychology studies is still in its early days, results are promising. As better understanding of the processes behind social cognition becomes increasingly necessary due to political, clinical, and even philosophical demands, the fact that tDCS is arguably rare in Social Neuroscience research is very noteworthy. This review aims at inspiring researchers to employ tDCS in the investigation of issues within Social Neuroscience. We present substantial evidence that tDCS is indeed an appropriate tool for this purpose.

Взаимосвязь ценностей и религиозной идентичности у школьников буддистского вероисповедания

The paper describes results of a social psychological study on religious identity in Buddhist schoolchil- dren. The study involved 184 students of 9—10 classes of a school in the Aginskoye settlement (Aginsky Buryatsky Okrug, Zabaykalsky Krai). According to G. Allport’s concept and R. Gorsuch & S. McPherson measurements, religious identity is considered not only as practicing Buddhism, but as a complex social psychological formation with a four-factor structure base on the following scales: personal/social and in- trinsic/extrinsic. Different components of religious identity are explored in the context of their relation- ship with value orientations (as described by S. Schwartz and G. Hofstede). The following techniques were employed: the adapted version of D. Van Camp’s Individual/Social Religious Identity Measure, Schwartz’s Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ-R2), and Hofstede’s Values Survey Module. As it was revealed, al- most all values related to various components of religious identity of the Buddhist adolescents refer to the social focus. The paper concludes that religious identity in modern Buddhist young people has a distinctive social character.

Религиозная идентичность студентов-мусульман (на материале изучения молодежи, проживающей в Чеченской республике)

The paper presents outcomes of a social psychological study on the structure and content of various components of religious identity in Muslim youth using the methods of C. Leach and D. Van Camp. The study also aimed to reveal the relationship between the components of religious identity and social consolidation. The study was carried out in Grozny (Chechen Republic, Russia) in the autumn of 2015. The sample consisted of 417 first- and second-year students of Chechen universities with an average age of 19, 164 male and 253 female. Empirical testing of the original models on the sample of Muslim students showed that religious identity in the Chechen young people represents a four-factor structure comprised of the following parameters: individual religious identity; faith identity; social religious identity; religion as a means of social interaction. The study also revealed significant correlations between the various parameters of religious identity and social consolidation. The research was conducted with the assistance of the Russian Science Foundation (№15-06-10843 “Risks and Resources of Religious Identity in Modern Russia: A Cross-Cultural Analysis”).

2. Public Information Messages: A Contrastive Genre Analysis of State-Citizen Communication

Public information messages are an important means of state-citizen communication in today’s societies. Using this genre, citizens are directed to “never ever drink and drive”, to “slow down” and to “learn to say no”. Yet, this book presents the first in-depth analysis of public information messages from a linguistic perspective, and indeed also from a cross-cultural perspective. Specifically, the study, adopting genre analysis, contrasts a corpus of state-run national public information campaigns in Germany and Ireland. A taxonomy of moves is developed inductively and the interactional features of the genre are analysed and related to the context of use. The comprehensive discussion of theoretical and methodological issues, the in-depth analysis and the extensive bibliography make this book of interest to researchers and students in (contrastive) discourse analysis, (cross-cultural) pragmatics, contrastive rhetoric, advertising, social psychology, mass communication and media studies. Copy-writers will also profit from the insights gained, particularly within the context of an increase in Europe-wide public information campaigns.

The Social Psychology of Citizenship: Engagement With Citizenship Studies and Future Research

In this article we review the argument outlined in the opening article in this special thematic section: that the current social psychology of citizenship can be understood as the development of longstanding conceptualisations of the concept within the discipline. These conceptualisations have contributed to the current social psychological study of the constructive, active and collective (but often exclusive) understandings of citizenship in people’s everyday lives, as evidenced by contributions to this thematic section. We consider how this emerging body of work might fit with current citizenship studies and in particular how it may contribute to the current trend towards conceiving citizenship as an active practice embedded in everyday social life. Specifically, we highlight three areas of future research that we think are particularly promising: citizenship and recognition; displays and enactments of citizenship in public space; citizenship and lived coexistence. Although this is far from an exhaustive list of possibilities, we propose that research in these areas could enable the way for social psychology to articulate a distinct, recognisable and valuable contribution to citizenship studies.