Identity Fusion,Extreme Pro‐Group Behavior,and the Path to Defusion

Identity fusion refers to a visceral sense of oneness with an ingroup. For fused individuals, group membership is not a means to an end (e.g., a positive social identity). Rather, membership is an all‐absorbing goal in itself; little other than the group matters. Group membership is also seen as enduring, sustained by chronically activated psychological structures as well as features of the context. Fellow group members are likewise seen as permanent members of the group, as they are members of the ingroup “family”. And just as family members are compelled to make extreme sacrifices for their family, so too are highly fused individuals – including even the ultimate sacrifice. These efforts to protect the ingroup can have negative consequences when, for example, people become strongly fused to groups that are devoted to extreme, anti‐social behaviors. In such instances, it may be prudent to encourage “defusion” from the group, but the emotional investment associated with fusion may thwart such efforts. We discuss the implications of these and related considerations.     

Liminality in Language Use: Some Thoughts on Interactional Analysis from a Dialogical Perspective

This essay traces my engagement with Michèle Grossen’s ideas of a dialogical perspective on interaction analysis (Grossen Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 1–22, 2009) and highlights a process account of self in interaction. Firstly I draw on Turner’s concept of liminality with respect to the transformative, temporal significance in interaction. Secondly I explored further the conversation analytic concepts such as formulation and reformulation as a viable analytical tool for a dialogical perspective. Lastly, I addressed the issue of interaction in institutional settings, in particular with interactional asymmetries of interaction, whilst relativising the I-position dialogical perspective. I explore insights from social anthropology as well as revisiting conversation analysis and discursive psychology, concluding that a promising direction would be sought through a cross-fertilisation between dialogism and other sibling perspectives concerning language use, communication, social action and discourse- and narrative-based analyses.     

Understanding Vietnamese Refugee Women's Identity Development From a Sociopolitical and Historical Perspective

The authors address the lack of information about the identity development of Vietnamese refugee women. Although their age and time of arrival to the United States have a major impact on Vietnamese refugee women's identity development, a review of the historical and sociopolitical influences on the identity development of this group also plays an important role in understanding their resiliency, traditional and nontraditional frames of references, and coping mechanisms.     

Surrogate Motherhood Revisited: Maternal Identity from a Jewish Perspective

A new bill regulating ovum donation in Israel is set to pass its second and third readings in the Israel Parliament in the upcoming months. The new law will expand the number of locally donated ova available, as previously Israeli women were prohibited from donating eggs unless they were undergoing fertility treatment. Parallel to this legislative initiative, there has been a change in rabbinical thinking over who is considered the mother in a case of surrogacy. Previously, the consensus has been that the birth mother is to be considered the mother, but over the last few years there has been a change in thinking and the genetic mother is now considered the mother. The purpose of this paper is to present the ethical and legal issues from a Jewish perspective in determining maternal identity. The dilemma also demonstrates some of the difficulties in applying Talmudic law to modern problems and the various methodologies used to overcome these issues.     

The Creative Identity: Creative Behavior From The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

This paper outlines a framework for understanding the motivation of certain creative behaviors from the perspective of symbolic interactionism. The fundamental tenets of symbolic interactionism are described, followed by a discussion of the mechanics of symbolic interactionist-based role-identity theory, and how the theory can be applied to the motivation of creative behavior. The paper also addresses directions for practical application and future research in this area.     

“I’m Not the Same,but I’m Not Sorry”: Exploring Dialogical Positioning in the Self-Transformation of a Former Politically Violent Militant

This article traces the personal and cultural voices expressed in the life-story interview of a former politically violent militant regarding her engagement with and disengagement from the armed struggle. Rather than looking at the macro and meso aspects related to politically motivated violence, we examine micro-narratives which express individual arguments, sociocultural discourses, and negotiations within and between them, These are voiced in the dynamics that take place within the self-system at times of key identity transitions (e.g., from being a committed militant to becoming a former militant). In this vein, we highlight how the embodied emotional chords of personal positions, the development of meta-positions, and the positioning and repositioning movements within the dialogical self, facilitate the emergence of new and more adaptive meanings in the personal meaning system of former militants.     

群体认同对极端群体行为的影响：中介及调节效应的检验

采用问卷调查法,以上海三所高校的467名大学生为被试,检验群体认同对极端群体行为（为群体牺牲意愿）的影响及其内在心理机制。结果表明：（1）群体认同对为群体牺牲意愿有显著的预测作用;（2）积极情感和否认态度完全中介群体认同对为群体牺牲意愿的影响,且积极情感在群体认同和否认态度之间担当部分中介角色;（3）抗伤害信念在积极情感和为群体牺牲意愿之间起调节作用。     

地方认同：环境心理学视角下的分析

Proshansky提出的“地方认同” (place identity, 1978)一词, 是环境心理学研究中的重要概念。它指的是人对居住环境的自我认同, 用于理解和测量“人-地关系”。已有研究分别从认知、情感和行为等方面论证了“地方认同”与“地方依恋”、“地方感”及“地方依赖”等概念之间的区别; 并在个体、社会和文化三个层面上均发现了影响地方认同的因素。未来的研究将采用社会认知的实验技术、以及纵向研究设计方法等, 一方面探讨地方认同的内在心理机制, 另一方面则利用此概念探索解决有关的现实问题。     

Inclusive Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior: Examination of LMX Perspective in Small Capitalized Textile Firms

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between inclusive leadership, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and innovative work behavior (IWB) in employees of small capitalized textile firms of Pakistan. We hypothesized that LMX mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and IWB. We collected data from 150 supervisors–subordinate dyads to test our hypotheses. We selected small capitalized firms because they are more innovative and change-oriented in order to enhance their innovativeness. Moreover, these firms enjoy the benefits of lack of bureaucracy and low resistance to change. Therefore, employees are better able to experience a close relationship with entrepreneurial leaders who tend to be inclusive, in order to facilitate the process of innovation. In line with these facts, our results also suggest that inclusive leadership is positively related with IWB and LMX partially mediates this relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.     

The Dialogical Dance: Self,Identity Construction,Positioning and Embodiment in Tango Dancers

Argentine tango is a complex phenomenon, involving music, dancing and lifestyle, today practiced by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. This is already a good reason for psychology to make it an object of study. Besides, studying tango could also help to develop a dialogical way of theorizing and a dialogical methodology, taking into account both the genetic historical and eso-systemic dimensions and the individual experiencing. As any other product of human psyche, tango creates an universal and abstract representation of life starting from very situated and individual acts. Such institutionalized representation, which is at the same time epistemological, ethical and aesthetical, becomes a tradition -that is the framework distanced from the individual immediate experience- within which the meaning of the experiences to be make sense in return. To illustrate this epistemological and methodological stance, a history of the development of tango as dialogical social object first is sketched. Then, an ethnographic study about the Self actuation in a community of Italian tango dancers is presented. Results show how participants construct and actuate their identities in a dialogue between their I-positions inside and outside tango community.     

Understanding Gang Joining from a Cross Classified Multi-Level Perspective

The present study seeks to address the gap in our understanding of the role of community- and school-level factors on individual-level gang joining. We assess our research question by bringing together data from a statewide survey of more than 35,000 school youth who were enrolled in more than 250 schools and resided in more than 300 communities. We first use multilevel modeling techniques to examine the independent relationship of community and school on the likelihood of individual youth gang joining. Second, while controlling for individual-level risk and protective factors, we examine the simultaneous relationship of community- and school-level conditions on gang joining. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that both community- and school-level characteristics play a role in gang joining. The results of the cross-classified model suggests that community structural characteristics may serve as protection against gang joining. Individual-level risk and protective factors remain important for understanding gang joining. A variety of factors are related to gang joining. Though individual-level factors are important, community- and school-level factors are meaningful in the understanding of gang joining.     

An Analysis of Feedback from a Behavior Analytic Perspective

The present paper presents a systematic analysis from a behavior analytic perspective of procedures termed feedback. Although feedback procedures are widely reported in the discipline of psychology, including in the field of behavior analysis, feedback is neither consistently defined nor analyzed. Feedback is frequently treated as a principle of behavior; however, its effects are rarely analyzed in terms of well-established principles of learning and behavior analysis. On the assumption that effectiveness of feedback procedures would be enhanced when their use is informed by these principles, we sought to provide a conceptually systematic account of feedback effects in terms of operant conditioning principles. In the first comprehensive review of this type, we compare feedback procedures with those of well-defined operant procedures. We also compare the functional relations that have been observed between parameters of consequence delivery and behavior under both feedback and operant procedures. The similarities observed in the preceding analyses suggest that processes revealed in operant conditioning procedures are sufficient to explain the phenomena observed in studies on feedback.     

Understanding Mozi's Foundations of Morality: a Comparative Perspective

In the Western studies of the texts of Mozi, three distinctive views have surfaced in the past few decades: (1) Mozi is inconsistent because he seems to have been committed to both a Utilitarian standard and a divine command theory; (2) Mozi is a divine command theorist who argues that it is right to benefit the world because it is the will of heaven; and (3) Mozi is a utilitarian thinker who has based morality on the criterion of whether actions benefit the world. In this paper, I will argue that the whole debate about whether Mozi is a divine command theorist or a utilitarian is misguided, because it is based on an incorrect understanding of the fundamental cultural perspective associated with the notion of Tian. An adequate understanding of the notion of Tian will reveal its fundamental difference from the Western notion of heaven. Such an understanding will enable us to put Mozi's moral philosophy in the ancient Chinese perspective in which a tension and potential conflict between ‘the will of heaven’ and ‘the benefit of the world’ simply cannot arise.     

Identity and injustice: Exploring women's participation in collective action

The present study is an investigation into the social psychological factors associated with women's reported participation in a range of different types of political action in the context of gender relations. At time 1,610 women were asked to rate their readiness to participate in various actions and to provide measures of social beliefs. Factor analysis extracted four types of action: participation in women's groups, collective protest, informal participation, and individual protest. One year later, at time 2, a subgroup of the same women were asked to say how much they had actually participated over the previous 12 months. Reported participation was related to gender identity, collective relative deprivation, efficacy, collectivist orientation, and identification as an activist. Regression analysis showed that identification as an activist was by far the most powerful correlate of participation, followed by gender identity; and that gender identity also played a role in moderating relationships between reported participation and other predictor variables. These findings show the important role of identity processes underlying participation in collective action and suggest the need to develop interaction models of participation.     

The Media and Violent Behavior in Young People: Effects of the Media on Antisocial Aggressive Behavior in a Spanish Sample1

This study discusses the relation between television, computer games, and the Internet and antisocial aggressive behavior in under‐18s. Given that the media are an important source of socialization for children, this research examines which variables in media exposure lead to antisocial behavior in under‐18s. A sample of 93 participants (male and female), aged 13–18, answered an antisocial behavior inventory and a survey on computer gaming and TV viewing. Results show gender differences in the relation between media use and preference for violent media and direct and indirect aggressive behaviors. These findings support the idea that lack of interaction and role taking leads to deprived socialization and, in turn, to antisocial behavior.