Social Transgressions Research Articles

Somebody do something: coexisting with social transgression on the metro

ABSTRACT Several factors decrease metro riders’ satisfaction, well-being, and willingness to use the metro. However, little attention has focused on the problems caused by social transgression and uncivilized behavior. Hence, the objectives of this study were to analyze the impact of norm transgression and uncivil behavior on coexistence among passengers and the emotional climate on the metro and to assess the social control exerted by passengers. We also explored whether the perception of social control changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample was composed of 357 passengers of the Buenos Aires metro. An online self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect the data. Path analysis results showed that beliefs about norms and the ease with which passengers break the norm of silence promote active social control. In contrast, the difficulty of breaking the norm of silence and the perception of public alienation lead to inactive social control.

Physiological Dysregulation in Children With and Without Externalizing Difficulties: Novel Insights From Intensive Longitudinal Data.

Extant research on physiological dysregulation in children has focused on point-in-time measures and absolute mean levels of physiology. However, these methods do not capture dynamic fluctuations in physiology that characterize dysregulation. In the present work, we aimed to assess whether physiological dysregulation as captured by fluctuations rather than mean levels would differentiate between children with and without clinically elevated levels of externalizing behavior. As an exploratory approach, we examined fluctuations in children's physiological responses (i.e., root mean square of successive differences [RMSSD] in beat-to-beat heart rate intervals) to social transgression scenarios across 15 short-term measurement occasions (5-second bins). Controlling for mean RMSSD, as well as emotional and cognitive correlates of externalizing behavior (i.e., sympathy and inhibitory control), children with externalizing difficulties exhibited greater within-person fluctuations in RMSSD (i.e., physiological dysregulation) compared to children without externalizing difficulties. The present findings provide preliminary support for using intensive longitudinal data comprised of short-term physiological measurements and point to the centrality of within-child physiological variability as a marker of dysregulation, particularly amongst children with externalizing disorders for whom self-regulation is a core challenge.

Lock Them Up: The Cold Conservatism of Ang Lee's The Ice Storm

Abstract This article considers how The Ice Storm (dir. Ang Lee, US, 1997) reframes the politics of Rick Moody's novel of the same name and works via a network of symbols to align character Elena Hood (Joan Allen) with Hillary Clinton, suggesting an analogy between the scandals of the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton presidencies. Simultaneously, the film mounts a sustained campaign to constrain female sexuality, chiefly through its sanitizing of male characters’ own sexuality and recasting of Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci) as a sexually predatory Riding Hood/witch figure. Through its constraining of social transgression more generally, punishing Mikey Carver (Elijah Wood) for the sins of his parents and wider community in a way that can be read fruitfully through Jacques Derrida's “Plato's Pharmacy,” the film produces a narrative of profound conservatism even as it courts progressive audiences. Notwithstanding its “independent” status, its distribution through Fox (then owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp), situates the film institutionally in ways that challenge our understanding of the category of “independent” as necessarily politically progressive. The film's double-dealing, this article argues, demands that we attend to the phenomenon of a film that invites identification with progressive or transgressive characters only to punish them with reintegration into regimes of the normal or, failing such a maneuver, death. The lingering question this article identifies is how we hold to account films that are misunderstood as belonging to canons of progressive aesthetics while functioning as stealth engines of retrograde normativity.

Transgressive Behaviours and Readiness to Engage in Interreligious Dialogue in Young Adulthood

One of the key aspects of an individual’s spiritual intelligence is the ability to transcend, which allows one to identify dimensions of reality that go beyond the boundaries of the material world. In the present study, we look at transcendence from the theoretical perspective of a conception proposed by Kozielecki, who defines human transgressive behaviour as all those actions and acts of thinking which exceed the limits of an individual’s existing material, symbolic and social capacities, and achievements and which constitute a source of new important values. One important social value is the readiness to engage in dialogue with people of other faiths. We wanted to investigate the associations between transgression and young people’s readiness to enter into such dialogue. Rydz and Bartczuk, departing from a psycholinguistic definition of dialogue, developed a definition of readiness to engage in interreligious dialogue, describing it as a person’s mental readiness to exchange views about religious topics with people of other religions. We hypothesised that there was a relationship between transgressive behaviours and dimensions of readiness to engage in interreligious dialogue among young adults. To verify these hypotheses, 528 people aged 18–25 were surveyed using the Readiness to Engage in Interreligious Dialogue Test (REID) and the Alternative Behaviours Checklist (ABC) based on Kozielecki’s conception of transgression. The results we obtained show that the dimensions of social transgression, creative transgression, and psychological transgression were positively related to dimensions of readiness to engage in interreligious dialogue.

Guilt and migrant experience in Australia: narratives of happiness and hatred

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the role that guilt plays in Australia’s construction of its outsiders by focusing on contemporary migrant experience. I build upon Sarah Ahmed’s work on the politics of emotion to read migrant interviews in relation to media: films, political speeches, and other discursive structures that facilitate social organization in Australia. In the first part of this paper, I argue that a ‘multicultural narrative’ positions the nation as a ‘happy home,’ and examine how this can displace feelings of guilt in the migrant by rendering possible social transgressions positive steps towards attaining a greater social good. In the second section of this paper, I discuss Australia’s ‘hatred narratives.’ I do not define hatred as a necessarily aggressive emotion, but instead, demonstrate the way particular words can be affectively charged because of the histories they invoke, and show how this affect can be mobilized to create outsiders who are not welcome in the national imaginary and Australian society. These narratives however, are not fixed: political parties can appeal to tropes that have accumulated in affective value – such as the ‘home’ – in order to achieve different political goals, and to organize social groups by aligning individuals with or against affectively charged objects.

Negative spillover of moral irresponsibility into anti-brand behaviors: the role of moral emotion and disengagement in ethical and social transgressions

PurposeAs one of the largest industries in the global economy, the fashion industry has emphasized the symbolic and aspirational features of its products while maximizing the efficiency of its manufacturing processes. However, the labor-intensive and competitive nature of the industry has meant that brand moral transgressions often occur. This study aims to understand the role of moral emotions and concerns (i.e. perceived spillover) caused by different moral transgressions and explain consumer anti-brand behaviors (i.e. negative word of mouth [WOM] and patronage cessation).Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling was conducted to examine group differences (ethical vs social transgressions) in Study 1 (n = 584). Also, the moderation effect of moral disengagement was examined in Study 2 (n = 324).FindingsThe results indicate that, for ethical transgressions, both moral emotions and perceived spillovers explain negative behaviors while moral emotions alone explain negative WOM on social media for social transgressions. Additionally, for social transgressions, the results of Study 2 indicate a negative interaction effect of moral emotions and moral disengagement on anti-brand behavior of patronage cessation.Originality/valueBased on the literature’s theoretical approach to moral crises, this paper examines the emotional and cognitive reactions of consumers to the fashion industry’s moral transgressions.

Australians underestimate social compliance with coronavirus restrictions: findings from a national survey

ObjectiveWe assessed differences between Australians’ perceptions of their own compliance with coronavirus restrictions and their perceptions of community compliance. MethodsWe surveyed a national quota sample of 1,691 Australians in August and September 2020. Participants reported their level of compliance with coronavirus restrictions and estimated compliance from others in their state/territory. ResultsOverwhelmingly, most people reported complying with restrictions. They believed their fellow community members were much less compliant. Age and other demographics were only weakly associated with self‐reported compliance and perceptions of others’ compliance. ConclusionsThe results are consistent with prevalent cognitive biases, including the tendency to believe one is better‐than‐average, and to more easily recall instances of deviances from social norms. Implications for public healthWe recommend public health messaging avoids amplifying instances of social transgressions of coronavirus restrictions. Instead, the widespread nature of social compliance with restrictions across the country should be emphasised.

An Analysis of the Normative (Non)Compliance and the Interactions among Passengers in the Buenos Aires Subway

The subway is a public transportation where the control and freedom of passengers must be regulated to create a peaceful and harmonious environment. Social transgression imposes an environment of discomfort and tension between passengers. This study aims to describe the regulations that Buenos Aires subway passengers know, to investigate the perception of (non)compliance with them, to analyze how the interaction among the passengers in the subway is perceived and how it is related to (non)compliance with the norms of coexistence and safety. The results indicated that the participants perceived a high degree of normative noncompliance. Generalized noncompliance accounts for the existence of informal rules that organize the behavior of passengers in contradiction with the guidelines of formal rules. This double standard causes problems of coexistence and safety in the subway. Normative transgressions negatively affect the interactions among passengers, bringing about a social climate of discomfort and tension.

The Terror Management Function of Descendent Continuity: Evidence That Descendent Continuity Acts as a Distal and Proximal Defense.

Previous researches showed that offspring can function as a distal defense, we presented seven studies to further explore the role of offspring in terror management for Chinese people based on their unique fertility culture. Both Studies 1a and 1b found that mortality salience increased desire for children. Study 2 showed that offspring salience reduced the effect of mortality salience on social transgressions judgments. Study 3 revealed that disruption of procreation strivings increased death-thought accessibility. Study 4 demonstrated that conscious responses to worldview threats overwhelmed the unconscious compensation effect of worldview threats on desire for children. Study 5a and Study 5b found that offspring salience decreased death anxiety for parents and nonparents. Taken together, these findings expand terror management theory, emphasizing descendent continuity not only as a related yet separate distal defense from the cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and close relationship but also as a proximal defense, especially for Chinese.

A guarantee of safety, a cautionary tale or a celebration? Popularity of true crime narratives through the lens of Mary Douglas’s concepts of pollution and defilement

The fascination with crime, hastily described by some as a symptom of moral degradation of Western culture, seems to be a defence mechanism used by individuals to deal with social transgressions and anomalies represented by serious crimes. The aim of this article is to analyse the growing popularity of true crime through the lens of Mary Douglas’s theory of purity and pollution, with a particular emphasis on the methods of dealing with anomalies appearing within conceptual schemata of a given culture. For this purpose, the text has been divided into four parts: the first part briefly presents the history of true crime; the second part analyses the idea of murder through the lens of Douglas’s theory; the third part discusses the reasons behind the popularity of true crime narratives; and the fourth part showcases how individuals use true crime stories as tools to deal with anomalies.

The social media use of Muslim women in the Arabian Peninsula: insights into self-protective information behaviours

PurposeThe purpose is to provide insight into the social media related information behaviours of Muslim women within Arab society, and to explore issues of societal constraint and control, and impact on behaviours.Design/methodology/approachThe study conducted semi-structured interviews with Muslim women resident within the capital city of a nation within the Arabian Peninsula.FindingsSocial media provides the study participants' with an important source of information and social connection, and medium for personal expression. However, use is constrained within sociocultural boundaries, and monitored by husbands and/or male relatives. Pseudonym accounts and carefully managed privacy settings are used to circumvent boundaries and pursue needs, but not without risk of social transgression. The authors provide evidence of systematic marginalisation, but also of resilience and agency to overcome. Self-protective acts of secrecy and deception are employed to not only cope with small world life, but to also circumvent boundaries and move between social and information worlds.Research limitations/implicationsFindings should not be considered representative of Muslim women as a whole as Muslim women are not a homogenous group, and Arabian Peninsula nations variously more conservative or liberal than others.Practical implicationsFindings contribute to practical and conceptual understanding of digital literacy with implications for education programmes including social, moral and intellectual aspects.Originality/valueFindings contribute to conceptual and practical understanding of information poverty, evidencing structural inequalities as a major contributory factor, and that self-protective information behaviours, often considered reductive, can also be expansive in nature.

Khap Panchayat: Retrieving ‘Honour’ through Violence

As the custodians of honour, Khap Panchayats are self-proclaimed tribunals with full validity and authority among the segments of their caste. These Panchayats are not real courts and do not have a constitutional basis. Under this unconstitutional system, all people of a village huddle around a Chabutara in order to make rapid, unilateral, and incontestable decisions on a variety of problems such as social transgression, marriage, offences, property rights, or situations endangering the village's tranquillity. It is concerning to notice that, in an era where individuals communicate via 3G technology, Indian civilization has regressed to the Dark Age. In today's culture, when legal standards and constitutional authority rule society, organisations like the Khap Panchayat obstruct progress and good government. The residents of the particular territory or community in which 'Khap' exists praise the dictates of Khap Panchayat; this is the most significant hurdle to Khap Panchayat's elimination. This study attempts to answer the question, "Why do Khaps still exist in India?" What is Khap's source of strength? It provides a thorough examination of the problem and attempts to propose a solution.

FUTUROLOGY OF SEPARATISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY: BEING VS DISSIPATION

The peculiarities of the “domestic” and political worlds’ interactions as well as their impact on the freedom of human choice are considered in the article. The purpose of the article is to analyze political and existential being which can be transformed in the light of collecting or distracting way. The phenomenon of national security is analyzed in theoretical as well as in practical dimension. The first part of the study of separatism is connected with the modern social world’s tendency of social transgression which involves blurring the rules and limits expansion. The frontier concept as the transgressive space, which can be embodied in the form of possibility of political interaction or as a place of a political conflict, is offered. Frontier understanding in the light of a cultural dialogue permits to consider it as a perspective dynamic system in the social projects of common being construction. The second part of the article reveals three main directions of transgression: philosophical and reflexive, ethical and normative, common practices. An idea of correlation between freedom of choice, manifestation of will with the human ability of critical thinking, reflection is offered and proved. Tolerance is defined to be the strategical practice in the process of launching a dialogue program of conflicting political communication.

The influence of perceptions of intentionality and controllability on perceived responsibility: Applying attribution theory to people’s responses to social transgression in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weiner's (1985) attribution theory explains how people interpret and react to causes of events Perceived responsibility plays a central role in this model Weiner (2006) considers perceived intentionality and controllability as crucial antecedents of perceived responsibility Although perceived controllability has been assessed cross-culturally and cross-situationally, perceived intentionality has not received similar levels of attention among those assessing Weiner's model The goal of the current research effort is to use Weiner's framework, with a focus on perceived controllability and intentionality, to explain responses to problematic behaviors associated with COVID-19 Recently, people who intentionally or carelessly transmitted the coronavirus have enraged the public The current study reports on an experiment (N = 271) that successfully manipulated perceived intentionality and controllability using a Chinese sample in the context of spreading COVID-19 on an airplane Perceived intentionality and controllability were empirically demonstrated as distinct attribution variables Stronger perceptions of intentionality and controllability increased perceived responsibility, anger, and the desire to punish Higher perceived controllability also decreased sympathy toward those who transmitted coronavirus Furthermore, analyses revealed an interaction between perceived intentionality and controllability Perceived controllability increased anger only when perceived intentionality was low;however, when intentionality was high, participants were angered regardless of perceived controllability A path analysis supported the qualitative universality of Weiner's attribution theory The current research illustrates the potential benefit of investigating perceived intentionality in attribution research The utility and applicability of Weiner's attribution theory in the COVID-19 pandemic in a collectivistic culture were supported (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Risk in the digital age: Comedian-activists and Trump’s cancel culture

This article contributes to the study of comedians as activists by examining the campaigns by some of America’s most influential figures – Seth Rogan, Jim Carrey, Dave Chapelle, Amy Schumer, Roseanne Barr and Kathy Griffin. To varying degrees, these comedians all use their star images and personal stories to influence public debates through their stand-up, television work, and content on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. By studying their activities in the media, their press coverage, and public reactions online, this article also presents an original examination of the way ‘Cancel Culture’ manifests, often hindering their activism. This includes identifying the polarizing influence of the ‘Canceller-in-Chief’ former president Donald J. Trump, and the risks suffered by comedian-activists in terms of their reputation, commercial prospects, and even their legality. Specifically, this article suggests that ‘Cancel Culture’ manifests as a spectrum of varying risk which can be shaped by the comedian’s star image and the degree of social transgression in their comedy.

Moralization East and West: Moralizing different transgressions among Chinese, Americans, and Lithuanians

In this article, we report a cross‐cultural study on how different types of social transgressions are moralised by Chinese, Americans, and Lithuanians. We hypothesised that given the continuing influences of Confucian worldview on contemporary Chinese societies, the Chinese will not make a distinction between moral (daode 道德) and conventional cultural norms (wenming 文明). Following Turiel’s moral/conventional task, we characterised moral transgressions in terms of two dimensions: Their wrongness is perceived to be independent of any authorities’ opinion and general in scope. The results indicate that Chinese participants were slightly more “moralising” than Americans and Lithuanians in the typical (Haidtean) moral domains. More importantly, unlike Americans and Lithuanians, the Chinese strongly moralised uncultured (wenming 文明) behaviour. Results also indicate that explicit considerations about purity were quite important across all three cultural groups. These mixed results are discussed in the light of recent debates about the scope of morality and the moral/conventional distinction.

What We (Don't) Know so Far About Tolerance Towards Corruption in European Democracies: Measurement Approaches, Determinants, and Types.

Cross-national survey data shows that for a significant share of European citizens, corruption is acceptable. Notwithstanding the importance of prior knowledge on corruption extension and experience, research has made little progress in exploring why people condone it, especially in unsuspicious countries, with effective institutions and stable democratic rules and processes. The present study examines this gap in the literature by assessing the European Values Study (EVS) and the Special Eurobarometer (EB) attempts at measuring ‘Tolerance towards Corruption’ (TtC) in OECD countries in Europe during the same period (2017–2019). In the end, measurements proved to be constrained by the limited number of questions/items that try to capture TtC, which gave room to conclude that: (a) EVS and EB approaches do not measure the same TtC. The first measures it through social transgressions not exclusively related to corruption, while the second measures the willingness to accept a public-office corruption when dealing with the public sphere. (b) Lower ages combined with individual preferences/perceptions of less satisfaction with life, widespread corruption, and prior experiences with corruption proved to be more relevant to explain TtC, regardless of the country in which individuals were surveyed. (c) The type of TtC citizens display in advanced democracies proved to be mainly contingent on their age and on the way they interpret the extension of corruption and the prior contact they had with a public-office corruption in a given society. Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02690-y.

To be only human: Humanizing effect of lowering humanity

IntroductionThe derogation and violence associated with describing others as less than human is documented in a wide range of research (e.g., Bandura, 1992; Optow, 1990). However, this research has only explored one side of the social comparisons that humanity can evoke. Integrating dehumanization research and that of social comparison, which suggests the different effects of upward and downward targets, we explore social comparison which lowers human nature and therefore raises the target (Suls et al., 2002; Suls et al., 2018).ObjectivesWhile dehumanization places others below humanity, we explore hyper-humanization which places humanity below other comparison classes. When humanity is characterized as a low social comparison class, this should lead people to reintegrate transgressors, evoke forgiveness and reduce revenge motives.MethodsTo test this hypothesis 577 participants viewed a vignette about a social transgression and completed the benevolence and avoidance subscales of the TRIM (McCullough et al., 2006). We manipulated dehumanization and hyper-humanization using a conversational prompt which asked participants to elaborate on descriptions of the social transgressor. In the dehumanization condition the target was described as “barely human”, and in the hyper-humanization condition the target was described as “only human”.ResultsUsing a mixed-model ANOVA, results indicate that in the rehumanization condition benevolence increased (F=5.30, p<.01) and avoidance decreased (F=4.75, p<.01) relative to dehumanization and controls.ConclusionsWhile lower groups below humanity may facilitate genocide and other social ills, other forms of social comparison with humanity may act to restore relationships and facilitate forgiveness.

Bilingual children judge moral, social, and language violations as less transgressive than monolingual children

Learning the rules and expectations that govern our social interactions is one of the major challenges of development. The current study examined whether bilingualism is associated with differences in children’s developing social knowledge. We presented 54 4- to 6-year-old monolingual and bilingual children with vignettes of moral transgressions (e.g., hitting), social transgressions (e.g., wearing pants on one's head), and language transgressions (e.g., calling a common object by a nonsense word) and asked about their permissibility. In line with previous research findings, results demonstrate that all children evaluated moral violations more harshly than conventional violations. Notably, however, bilingual children were more permissive of violations across moral, social, and language domains than monolingual children. These findings yield new insights into the role of early experience in the development of social knowledge. We propose that bilinguals’ unique linguistic and social experiences influence their understanding of moral and conventional rules.

Will Life Extension Affect Our Social Judgments? Evidence That the Possibility of Indefinite Life Extension Increases Harshness Toward Social Transgressors.

We tested the hypothesis that if indefinite life extension (ILE) through medical technologies were to become a reality, then people may become harsher in their judgment of social transgressors. In support of this hypothesis, we found that higher positive attitudes towards ILE technologies related to harshness in judgment of social transgressions (Study 1), and that making ILE plausible (compared to not plausible) led participants to endorse harsher punishments for social transgressors (Studies 2-3). We replicated this effect and found that it is not amplified by subliminal death primes, although the primes also increased harshness (Study 3). These results may have implications to understanding how social judgment may be affected by the prospect of ILE.