Why did it happen to me? Social cognition processes in adjustment and recovery from criminal victimisation and illness

This article reviews the theoretical framework and empirical evidence for the hypothesised relationship between self-blame attributions and psychological adjustment. In doing so, an argument is presented that poses an alternative interpretation to that which is widely accepted regarding the complex relationship between blame attributions, perceived control, self-esteem, and recovery. A number of fundamental issues concerning the assumptions underlying Janoff-Bulman’s model are identified and explored. In particular, attention is given to the importance of distinguishing perceived control from likelihood of recurrence, and perceived control from outcome expectancy. Finally, the possibility that attributions may not play as fundamental a role in adjustment as first thought is considered, and future lines of enquiry are identified.     

Why did it happen to me? Social cognition processes in adjustment and recovery from criminal victimisation and illness

This article reviews the theoretical framework and empirical evidence for the hypothesised relationship between self-blame attributions and psychological adjustment. In doing so, an argument is presented that poses an alternative interpretation to that which is widely accepted regarding the complex relationship between blame attributions, perceived control, self-esteem, and recovery. A number of fundamental issues concerning the assumptions underlying Janoff-Bulman’s model are identified and explored. In particular, attention is given to the importance of distinguishing perceived control from likelihood of recurrence, and perceived control from outcome expectancy. Finally, the possibility that attributions may not play as fundamental a role in adjustment as first thought is considered, and future lines of enquiry are identified.     

Collective Efficacy as a Task Specific Process: Examining the Relationship Between Social Ties, Neighborhood Cohesion and the Capacity to Respond to Violence, Delinquency and Civic Problems

In the neighborhood effects literature, collective efficacy is viewed as the key explanatory process associated with the spatial distribution of a range of social problems. While many studies usefully focus on the consequences of collective efficacy, in this paper we examine the task specificity of collective efficacy and consider the individual and neighborhood factors that influence residents’ perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy for specific tasks. Utilizing survey and administrative data from 4,093 residents nested in 148 communities in Australia, we distinguish collective efficacy for particular threats to social order and assess the relative importance of social cohesion and neighborhood social ties to the development of collective efficacy for violence, delinquency and civic/political issues. Our results indicate that a model separating collective efficacy for specific problems from social ties and the more generalized notions of social cohesion is necessary when understanding the regulation potential of neighborhoods.     

相对剥夺感与社会适应方式：中介效应和调节效应

以6175名17岁以上的个体为被试, 采用四种自编问卷考察了相对剥夺感对创新和反叛这两种社会适应方式的影响, 归因方式在其中的中介作用和调节作用, 同时还考察了反叛在相对剥夺感和创新关系中的调节作用。结果发现：①相对剥夺感对创新和反叛具有正向预测作用, 相对剥夺感越高, 创新和反叛的程度越强烈; ②归因方式对相对剥夺感和创新的关系起部分中介作用, 对相对剥夺感和反叛的关系起部分中介作用; ③归因方式在相对剥夺感和反叛的关系中起调节作用, 能增强相对剥夺感和反叛之间的关系; ④在下层阶层中, 反叛在相对剥夺感和创新的关系中起调节作用, 能减弱相对剥夺感和创新之间的关系。综上所述可以认为, 相对剥夺感对社会适应方式具有正向预测作用; 归因方式对相对剥夺感与社会适应方式的关系起部分中介作用; 在弱势群体阶层中, 反叛能减弱相对剥夺感对创新的直接影响。     

Do bowerbirds exhibit cultures?

Definitions of what features constitute cultural behaviour, and hence define cultures are numerous. Many seem designed to describe those aspects of human behaviour which set us apart from other animals. A broad definition prescribing that the behaviour is: learned; learned socially; normative and collective is considered to apply to several species of great ape. In this paper, I review observations and experiments covering a suite of different behavioural characteristics displayed in members of the bowerbird family (Ptilonorhynchidae) and ask whether they fulfil these criteria. These include vocalisations, bower design, decoration use, bower orientation and display movements. Such a range of behaviours refutes the suggestion that these species are “one-trick ponies”—a criticism that is often levelled at claims for culture in non-primate species. I suggest that, despite a paucity of data in comparison with primate studies, it could be argued that bowerbirds may be considered to fulfil the same criteria on which we base our use of the term culture when applied to our close relatives, the great apes. If bowerbirds do have cultures, then their unusual natural history makes them a highly tractable system in which questions of social learning and culture can be tackled.     

Alternative approaches for thinking about and modeling consumer decisions in relationships

Simpson, Griskevicius, and Rothman identify an understudied area in consumer research (namely, decision making in social relationships), propose an important starting point for enquiry (a dyadic framework), and suggest many fruitful moderators for study that can be incorporated in their framework. After pointing out some boundary conditions and opportunities for future research concerning their suggestions, I consider a recent approach in psychology that applies to a relatively circumscribed domain of social relationships (i.e., the social relations model) and then briefly review an emerging approach (plural subject theory applied to goal-directed behavior) that goes beyond the social relations model and better fits certain psychological and social psychological phenomena in consumer behavior.     

Agency, properties and causation

The paper argues against the very commonly held view that whenever a substance may be said to be the cause of something, a fuller and metaphysically more accurate understanding of the situation can always be obtained by looking to the properties in virtue of which that substance was able to bring about the effect in question. Paul Humphreys’ argument that when a substance is said to have produced an effect, it always turns out to be an aspect or property of that substance which brought about the effect in question is examined and criticized; it is argued that it is based on an illegitimate application of Mill’s Methods of Difference and Agreement to the case. Mill’s methods, it is suggested, are methods of empirical, not of ontological enquiry. The paper then turns to examine an argument by Mele which appears to depend on a structurally rather similar assumption that if there is nothing about a subject which could explain why she does one thing rather than another, it cannot really be up to that subject which thing occurs. It is suggested that, too, the inference is faulty, and that once it is rejected, one common objection to libertarianism—the argument from luck—might be more readily met.     

Affect,infrastructure and activism: The House of Brag's London Queer Social Centre in Brixton,South London

The House of Brag was a queer, anti-racist, feminist squatting collective active between 2012 and 2014. This article pieces together an affective and infrastructural geography of the House of Brag's last project: a squatted social centre in Brixton, south London, in the summer of 2014. Drawing on interviews with members of the collective, this article argues that efforts to think and live social and political alternatives – and the affective dimensions of these efforts – cannot be abstracted from their infrastructures. The material space and infrastructure of the squatted social centre, this article contends, shaped the House of Brag's dynamics and work in crucial ways. In foregrounding these issues, this article contributes to literature on geographies of affect, emotions and social movements, in which conflict and ‘negative’ affects and emotions are often minimised, and which largely overlook the complex material geographies of spaces of activism. In exploring a queer, anti-racist, feminist squatted project in 2010s London, this article also contributes to literature on squatting by focusing on a time period, on politics and on locations largely overlooked.     

Patterns of Stress and Support Among Adventist Clergy: Do Pastors and their Spouses Differ?

Studies of clergy stress have addressed the demands made by the ministry environment on the minister’s personal and family life. Most of the research has been conducted using the individual responses of male pastors. Comparatively little empirical research has been done with pastors’ wives, and still less where both the husbands’ and the wives’ responses are matched and compared. The present study utilizes Hill’s (Families under stress, Harper, New York, 1949) ABC-X model of family stress to examine differences between spouses in how demand, support, and perception relate to personal and ministry outcomes. Survey results from a sample of 147 male Seventh-Day Adventist clergy and their wives indicated that while there were some consistent differences in levels of demand and support, the most salient variable was their satisfaction with available social support, and this was true of both pastors and wives.     

A Social-Cognitive-Ecological Framework for Understanding the Impact of Exposure to Persistent Ethnic–Political Violence on Children’s Psychosocial Adjustment

In this article, we describe a theoretical framework for understanding how persistent and extreme exposure to ethnic–political conflict and violence interacts with cognitive, emotional, and self processes to influence children’s psychosocial adjustment. Three recent strands of theorizing guide our approach. First, we focus on how observational and social learning processes combine to influence the development of social-cognitive structures and processes that affect behavior. Second, we focus on the role of developing self and identity processes in shaping the child’s interactions with the world and the consequences of those interactions. Third, we build on the complex systems perspective on development and assume that human development can only be understood accurately by examining how the multiple contexts affecting children and the adults in their lives interact to moderate biosocial factors which predispose individuals to develop in certain directions. We review the recent empirical literature on children’s exposure to ethnic–political violence and we apply the social-cognitive-ecological framework to the empirical findings in this literature. Finally, we propose future directions for research and clinical implications derived from this framework.     

Empathy,social psychology,and global helping traits

The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits. In response, a number of philosophers have argued that virtue ethics can accommodate the empirical results in question. My own view is that neither side of this debate is looking in the right direction. For there is an impressive array of evidence from the social psychology literature which suggests that many people do possess one or more robust global character traits pertaining to helping others in need. But at the same time, such traits are noticeably different from a traditional virtue like compassion.

How does dominance rank status affect individual and social learning performance in the dog (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>)?

Dogs can learn effectively to detour around a V-shaped fence after observing a demonstration from either an unfamiliar human or dog demonstrator. We found earlier that there is substantial individual variation between the dogs’ performance, even when using the same experimental conditions. Here, we investigate if the subjects’ relative dominance rank with other dogs had an effect on their social learning performance. On the basis of the owners’ answers to a questionnaire, subjects from multi-dog homes were sorted into groups of dominant and subordinate dogs. In Experiment 1, dominant and subordinate dogs were tested without demonstration and we did not find any difference between the groups—they had similarly low detour performances on their own. In Experiment 2 and 3, dogs from single dog and multi-dog households were tested in the detour task with demonstration by an unfamiliar dog, or human, respectively. The results showed that social learning performance of the single dogs fell between the dominant and subordinate multi-dogs with both dog and human demonstration. Subordinate dogs displayed significantly better performance after having observed a dog demonstrator in comparison to dominant dogs. In contrast, the performance of dominant and subordinate dogs was almost similar, when they observed a human demonstrator. These results suggest that perceived dominance rank in its own group has a strong effect on social learning in dogs, but this effect seems to depend also on the demonstrator species. This finding reveals an intricate organization of the social structure in multi-dog households, which can contribute to individual differences existing among dogs.     

Biomedicine: an ontological dissection

Though ubiquitous across the medical social sciences literature, the term “biomedicine” as an analytical concept remains remarkably slippery. It is argued here that this imprecision is due in part to the fact that biomedicine is comprised of three interrelated ontological spheres, each of which frames biomedicine as a distinct subject of investigation. This suggests that, depending upon one’s ontological commitment, the meaning of biomedicine will shift. From an empirical perspective, biomedicine takes on the appearance of a scientific enterprise and is defined as a derivative category of Western science more generally. From an interpretive perspective, biomedicine represents a symbolic-cultural expression whose adherence to the principles of scientific objectivity conceals an ideological agenda. From a conceptual perspective, biomedicine represents an expression of social power that reflects structures of power and privilege within capitalist society. No one perspective exists in isolation and so the image of biomedicine from any one presents an incomplete understanding. It is the mutually-conditioning interrelations between these ontological spheres that account for biomedicine’s ongoing development. Thus, the ontological dissection of biomedicine that follows, with particular emphasis on the period of its formal crystallization in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, is intended to deepen our understanding of biomedicine as an analytical concept across the medical social sciences literature.

Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory “goes beyond the individual” but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency.     

Collaborative Research, Knowledge and Emergence

We use the notion of emergence to consider the sorts of knowledge that can be produced in a collaborative research project. The notion invites us to see collaborative work as a developmental dynamic system in which various changes constantly occur. Among these we examine two sorts of knowledge that can be produced: scientific knowledge, and collaborative knowledge. We argue that collaborative knowledge can enable researchers to reflectively monitor their collaborative project, so as to encourage its most productive changes. On the basis of examples taken from this special issue, we highlight four modes of producing collaborative knowledge and discuss the possible uses of such knowledge.

Is Mozi a utilitarian philosopher?

In this essay I argue that Mozi’s philosophy is anything but utilitarianism by way of analysing four ethical theories. Utilitarianism is an ethics in which the moral subject is an atomic individual human being, and its concern is how to fulfill the interests of the individual self and the social majority. Confucian ethics is centered on the notion of the family and its basic question is that of priority in the relationship between the small self and the enlarged or collective self. Opposite to these two moral theories is Mozi’s ethics: The interests that Mozi is primarily concerned with are not the interests of my individual self or my collective self, but the interests of the other. The fulfillment of the material needs of the other is my moral obligation. The arguments are centered on the three basic concepts, “the I,” “the we,” and “the other.” The significance of Mozi’s thought in modern or postmodern context lies in its striking resemblance to the philosophy of a contemporary western philosopher, Levinas. In both Mozi and Levinas, there is a suspension of utilitarianism. __________ Translated from Zhongguo Zhexue Shi 中国哲学史 (History of Chinese Philosophy), 2005 (1)     

Social relationships and social support among post‐war youth in Northern Uganda

Although social relationships and social support are salient factors for post‐war adolescents' psychosocial coping and adjustment, there is only limited information regarding war‐affected adolescents' views on social support and the relationships within which social support is provided. This study therefore explored both elements among a clinical sample of 20 adolescents living in post‐war Northern Uganda. Following Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis, we found a prominent role of the biological mother and other primary biological family members in the upbringing of our participants. Spiritual and material support were perceived to be the most important type of support, respectively, while the adolescents were growing up and in their current lives. These findings provide support for the perception that caregiving systems are adaptable to particular sociocultural contexts. Further, the importance of particular functions of social support could signify a potentially selective buffering effect of these functions in adverse contexts. Because of the importance of the primary biological family and the salient role of parent–child relationships in the face of adversity, future research needs to focus on this particular kind of social relationship in contexts of prolonged collective violence.     

Observation as a method to enhance collective efficacy: An integrative review

ObjectivesThis review provides an integrative argument for the use of observation as an intervention to manipulate individual collective efficacy beliefs in sports teams.DesignAn exploration of the conceptual and empirical evidence underpinning observation-based interventions for increasing collective efficacy.MethodA presentation of reflections on the following. First, we reflect on existing techniques used to increase self- and collective efficacy beliefs. Second, we consider collective efficacy in the context of observational learning and the various modeling techniques employed in the sports and motor performance literature. Third, we highlight relevant literature from neuroscience, outlining the analogous neural pathways evident for social cognition (i.e., collective efficacy) and observation.ResultsThis review presents a case for the use of observation interventions to manipulate collective efficacy, drawing upon social psychological frameworks of human behavior, the observation-based literature, and contemporary understanding of brain and behavior.ConclusionsObservation-based interventions are suited for collective efficacy manipulation in sport. There is a need to advance understanding of this relationship in order to maximize improvements in collective efficacy across group contexts.     

Do Provocateurs’ Emotion Displays Influence Children’s Social Goals and Problem Solving?

The social goals and social problem-solving of children who varied in social adjustment were examined in the context of hypothetical ambiguous provocation situations in which provocateurs’ emotion displays were systematically manipulated. Children rated the importance of six different social goals and explained how they would solve the problems. Social adjustment was measured with rating and nomination sociometric procedures. Rejected-aggressive, rejected-nonaggressive, average-nonaggressive, and popular-nonaggressive children showed both commonalities and differences in rating the six social goals, the relative importance of the six social goals, and social problem-solving depending on the provocateur’s emotion display. When provocateurs were happy, there were few group differences, but when provocateurs were angry or sad, rejected-aggressive children: a) rated hostile/instrumental goals more positively; b) rated prosocial goals less positively; and c) made problem-solving responses that were less friendly than those of other children. Results are discussed in relation to Lemerise and Arsenio’s (2000) model of emotion and social information processing.