MAGIC,RELIGION, SCIENCE,TECHNOLOGY, AND ETHICS IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD

Abstract. In this essay I argue that magic, religion, science, technology, and ethics are components of cultures that coexist at every stage of the evolution of societies and cultures and are interconnected and intertwined with each other within the web of relationships with other components of social life and culture. They undergo changes under the influence of each other and of social and cultural factors that coevolve with them throughout the history of humanity in the direction of democratization. The religion‐and‐science discussion is embedded within the framework of the postmodern social scientific discourse to illustrate that the apparent contradictions or substitutions disappear and that in actual human experience there is cooperation and complementarity between these elements of culture.     

Translating Dispositional Resistance to Change to the Culture Level: Developing a Cultural Framework of Change Orientations

A fundamental societal challenge is to balance the desire for growth, development, and progress on the one hand and the need for stability and maintenance of the status quo on the other. To better understand how societies deal with this challenge we employ the personality trait of dispositional resistance to change to conceptualize and empirically establish the concept of cultural change orientation. With data from individuals in 27 countries (N = 6487), we identify three culture‐level change orientation dimensions (routine seeking, affective reactance, and cultural rigidity) and interpret their meaning through their relationships with established cultural frameworks (e.g. GLOBE, Hofstede, Inglehart, and Schwartz). We thus propose a new culture‐level framework and test hypotheses about relationships between change orientation dimensions and national indexes of economic, technological, social, and environmental change. Our findings demonstrate meaningful differential relationships between the three change orientation dimensions and these societal outcomes. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

组织内领导越轨行为研究：概念、诱因与结果

领导越轨行为是指领导者在工作场所中故意违反重要的组织规范的行为。通过整合分析组织内越轨行为和领导行为两个领域的相关研究发现, 领导越轨行为的诱因大致包括个体因素(个性特征、个体知觉和人口学变量)和情境因素(组织文化、工作特征和人际影响)两类, 并且主要通过社会比较、社会心理和社会交换三条路径进一步影响下属的工作绩效。未来研究应从行为客体(组织-人际)和行为动机(利己-利他)两个角度对领导越轨行为的内涵进行纵深拓展, 并进一步考察不同诱因的交互影响以及领导越轨行为的作用机制。     

Food for thought: a study of food consumption in postmodern US culture

• The objective of this research is to examine the symbolic meanings of contemporary food consumption and provide an in‐depth understanding of related practices. Specifically, we view food as a prominent cultural category representative of postmodernism and approach our study using a postmodern perspective. The paper provides an insight into how US consumers relate to food and highlights the symbolic dimension of food in a culture that is often depicted as highly individualistic. Offering a theoretical framework rooted in an ethnographic account of food consumption we uncover its postmodern complexities that take into account social, cultural, and contextual dimensions. Food is discussed in the context of relationships, desire, and a globalized commodity.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dimensionality and Validity of a Structured Telephone Reference Check Procedure

A structured telephone reference check (STRC) was developed to assess three job-relevant personality/interpersonal dimensions (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, customer focus) for a family of entry-level, customer-contact jobs within a service organization. The procedure was designed to be brief (a 10–15 minute telephone call with each referee) and easy to administer by untrained recruitment staff. Confirmatory factor analyses on referee ratings for 223 applicants indicated that referees were able to adequately discriminate between dimensions of applicants' past performance. A predictive, criterion-related validation study on those applicants who were hired demonstrated that the STRC predicted supervisory ratings of job performance (   r = .25, p < .01,  uncorrected; .36 corrected for range restriction and criterion unreliability). No evidence was found that referees with shorter working relationships with applicants provided less valid ratings.     

文化对中国人思维方式的影响

文化对生活于其中的人们的心理与行为有影响已是公认的事实 ,但不同的学科对文化通过什么起作用却一直存在争论 ,文化心理学的兴起对回答这个问题提供了一条值得借鉴的思路。该文通过分析 90年代以来文化心理学研究的思路、方法以及这种思路与方法在研究中国人的思维特性时的发现 ,指出对中国人思维特性的探讨能够使我们在更深的的层次上理解中国文化的影响以及东西方文化差异的根源。     

Interpersonal aggression and team effectiveness: The mediating role of team goal commitment

This study examines the detrimental effect that interpersonal aggressive behaviours may have on two dimensions of team effectiveness, namely team performance and team viability. Moreover, this study investigates the mediating role of team goal commitment in these relationships. Data were collected from 97 work teams (341 members and 97 immediate supervisors) working in a public safety organization. The results indicate that interpersonal aggression is negatively related to team performance and team viability. The results also show that team goal commitment exercises a complete mediating role with regard to these relationships. Overall, this study highlights potential negative consequences of interpersonal aggression at the team level.     

公正世界信念与大学生社会责任感的关系:人际信任的解释作用及其性别差异

社会责任感是大学生学业成就和幸福生活等积极心理与行为的有效预测指标,考察社会责任感的影响因素及其作用机制有助于大学生社会责任感的培养与提升。为此,本研究以6所高校852名大学生为被试,考察了公正世界信念与大学生社会责任感之间的关系,以及人际信任对二者关系的中介作用及其性别差异。结果发现：（1）公正世界信念可以显著正向预测大学生的社会责任感;（2）人际信任在公正世界信念与大学生社会责任感之间发挥着部分中介作用,但是主要表现在男大学生群体中,而女大学生中未发现该效应。这说明,公正世界信念可以显著预测大学生社会责任感,并且在男大学生中人际信任是二者关系的中介桥梁。     

A Tripartite Approach to Right‐Wing Authoritarianism: The Authoritarianism‐Conservatism‐Traditionalism Model

Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) has been conceptualized and measured as a unidimensional personality construct comprising the covariation of the three traits of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. However, new approaches have criticized this conceptualization and instead viewed these three “traits” as three distinct, though related, social attitude dimensions. Here we extend this approach providing clear definitions of these three dimensions as ideological attitude constructs of Authoritarianism, Conservatism, and Traditionalism. These dimensions are seen as attitudinal expressions of basic social values or motivational goals that represent different, though related, strategies for attaining collective security at the expense of individual autonomy. We report data from five samples and three different countries showing that these three dimensions could be reliably measured and were factorially distinct. The three dimensions also differentially predicted interpersonal behaviour, social policy support, and political party support. It is argued that conceptualizing and measuring RWA as a set of three related ideological attitude dimensions may better explain complex sociopolitical phenomena than the currently dominant unidimensional personality based model.     

Anger, Blame, and Dimensions of Perceived Norm Violations: Culture, Gender, and Relationships

From a social cognitive perspective on anger, we attempted to examine the structure of perceived norm violations and their relationships with anger. We asked 884 university students from 4 countries (United States, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong) to rate their experiences of being harmed in terms of norm violations, angry feelings, blame, and relationship with the harm doers. We found 2 culturally common dimensions in perceived norm violations (informal interpersonal norms and formal societal norms), and these dimensions substantially increased both angry feelings and blame in almost all cultural groups. The violation of interpersonal norms generally evoked anger more frequently than that of societal norms, but there were interactions between culture and relationship closeness and between gender and relationship closeness.     

Social relationships: the nature and function of relational schemas

This paper reviews developments in the field of close relationships from an interdependence theory perspective. It concludes that focusing on the relational, dyadic aspects of relationships has led to a much better understanding of social cognition and of interpersonal processes. In this vein, the nature and function of relational schemas seems a particularly promising new direction for research. It encompasses recent work on self‐in‐relation‐to‐other schema structure, the organization of schemas in cognitive networks, motivated construal in service of a need for felt security, and the dynamics of attachment and dependency regulation. Despite some impressive advances in research on close relationships, however, a more social psychological emphasis on the causal influence of features of social situations on cognition and behavior is important for the future health of the field. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Direct and indirect effects of third-party relationships on interpersonal trust

Past studies of the determinants of interpersonal trust have focused primarily on how trust forms in isolated dyads. Yet within organizations, trust typically develops between individuals who are embedded in a complex web of existing and potential relationships. In this article, the authors identify 3 alternative ways in which a trustor and trustee may be linked to each other via third parties: network closure (linked via social interactions with third parties), trust transferability (linked via trusted third parties), and structural equivalence (linked via the similarity of their relationships with all potential third parties within the organization). Each of these is argued to influence interpersonal trust via a distinct social mechanism. The authors hypothesized that network closure and structural equivalence would predict interpersonal trust indirectly via their impact on interpersonal organizational citizenship behaviors performed within the interpersonal relationship, whereas trust transferability would predict trust directly. Social network analyses of data gathered from a medium-sized work organization provide substantial support for the hypotheses and also suggest important directions for future research.     

Comparative loneliness of users versus nonusers of online chatting

Online chatting is an important component of improving interpersonal relationships online, but it may reduce participants' communication time with family members. We conducted a study of the relationship between participants' intent to engage in online chatting and three dimensions of loneliness: social, familial, and romantic. This study was designed to show the effect of online chatting on each of these three dimensions of loneliness. The participants in the study were 709 students at two universities in Taiwan who were classified on the basis of whether or not they had ever engaged in online chatting. Of the participants, 651 (91.82%) fully completed the questionnaires that served as the study instruments and were included in data analysis. The study found that individuals who had participated in online chatting exhibited greater familial loneliness than those who had not because the time spent in online chatting reduced the time spent in familial relationships. Social loneliness was related to the quality of Internet relationships rather than to the time spent online. Individuals who participated in online chatting had less romantic loneliness because of a greater ease of maintaining romantic relationships online. We conclude that online chatting can reduce social loneliness through high-quality Internet relationships but may exacerbate familial loneliness.     

The Psychology of Nice People

Popular culture often describes being nice as a social disadvantage. However, research repeatedly finds that being agreeable is associated with a number of advantages. Literature noting the positive benefits of being agreeable is reviewed. The paper also addresses how agreeableness, one of the Big Five personality dimensions, is linked with higher-quality friendships, successful parenting, better academic and career performance, and health. The case is made that being agreeable is not equated to being easily influenced nor is it an artifact because of social desirability. Finally, cultural and gender differences related to agreeableness are addressed. Based on the review of the literature, it is postulated that being agreeable may be the path to enduring interpersonal relationships, happiness, success, and well-being.     

The universal psychology of kinship: evidence from language

Kinship is central to social organization in many societies; how people think about kinship should be relevant to social cognition generally. One window onto the mental representation of kinship is afforded by variation and universals in terms for kin. Kin terminologies are commonly organized around binary distinctive features, and terms for some types of kin are consistently linguistically marked. These observations can be formalized in the newly developed framework of linguistic Optimality Theory: permutations in the rank order of a small set of constraints generate basic types of kin terminology without over-generating rare or non-existent types. The result, I argue, is evidence for an innate faculty of social cognition (including several universal schemas of social relationships), apparently shaped by several kinds of genetic kin selection.     

Five domains of interpersonal competence in peer relationships

In three studies we investigated the utility of distinguishing among different domains of interpersonal competence in college students' peer relationships. In Study 1 we developed a questionnaire to assess five dimensions of competence: initiating relationships, self-disclosure, asserting displeasure with others' actions, providing emotional support, and managing interpersonal conflicts. Initial validation evidence was gathered. We found that self-perceptions of competence varied as a function of sex of subject, sex of interaction partner, and competence domain. In Study 2 we found moderate levels of agreement between ratings of competence by subjects and their roommates. Interpersonal competence scores were also related in predictable ways to subject and roommate reports of masculinity and femininity, social self-esteem, loneliness, and social desirability. In Study 3 we obtained ratings of subjects' competence from their close friends and new acquaintances. Relationship satisfaction among new acquaintances was predicted best by initiation competence, whereas satisfaction in friendships was most strongly related to emotional support competence. The findings provide strong evidence of the usefulness of distinguishing among domains of interpersonal competence.     

The Influence of Organizational Culture on Work‐Related Personality Requirement Ratings: A multilevel analysis

The effects of organizational culture on job incumbents' ratings of work‐related personality requirements were investigated. Data collected from 270 customer service representatives working within 37 mobile phone service companies in China demonstrated significant between‐organization differences and sufficient within‐organization agreement on two dimensions of work‐related personality requirements, achievement orientation and conscientiousness, to suggest that these work‐related personality requirements can be interpreted as organizational‐level constructs. Furthermore, incumbents' ratings of the two personality requirements were positively related to two corresponding dimensions of organizational culture, achievement‐oriented culture and integrity‐oriented culture, respectively, and as predicted, both were positively associated with team‐oriented culture. Further analyses revealed that team‐oriented culture appeared to play a particularly salient role in predicting incumbents' perceptions about the importance of the two dimensions of personality requirements.     

Perceived Inequity: Does It Explain Burnout Among Medical Specialists?1

This study investigated, among medical specialists (N= 2,400), the association between perceived inequity in relationships at work (patients, colleagues, organization) and burnout, and the moderating role of communal orientation. Intrapersonal inequity, involving an internal standard of reference, and interpersonal inequity, taking colleagues as the standard of reference, were assessed. The adjusted response rate was 63%. Intrapersonal inequity affected all burnout dimensions: emotional exhaustion in all relationships at work, depersonalization in the relationship with patients, and reduced personal accomplishment in relationships with colleagues and the organization. Intrapersonal inequity explained more variance in burnout than did interpersonal inequity. Communal orientation did not moderate these associations. Hence, medical specialists are more vulnerable to burnout if they perceive their relationships at work to be inequitable, regardless of their tendency to help others. Organizations might, therefore, prevent burnout by creating a working environment that is supportive and appreciative.     

Religions and social capital. Theses on religion(s), state(s), and society(ies): With particular reference to the United Kingdom and the European Union

The article explores aspects of the relationship between social capital and religious organizations with particular reference to the United Kingdom and the European Union. It draws on guidance from the Local Government Association, a recent report on the interface between government and faith communities from the Faith Communities Unit of the Home Office, and the results of research for the Council of Europe. All this is explored through reference to seven theses on the relationships between religion(s), state(s), and societ(ies) and by using some of the thinking of Marc Luyckx (1994) on the position of religion in post-industrial and postmodern societies.