Positioning theory as a discursive approach to understanding same‐sex intimate violence

This study focuses on same‐sex intimate violence, recognizing that violence in gay and lesbian relationships is as severe and prevalent as in heterosexual relationships. Positioning theory as a relational approach is used as an alternative to the dominant individual and structural accounts. Intimate violence is seen as produced through the assignment of rights and duties or positioning in couples' conversations. Two gay and two lesbian couples were interviewed. A basic discursive pattern was found from 25 accounts of episodes involving physical violence. Violence ensued only after the initiator of violence had claimed innocence or blamelessness and attributed guilt or blame on the receiver of violence. The findings are discussed in relation to the discursive production of power and violence.     

Blind and constructive patriotism,national symbols and outgroup attitudes

We examined whether there is a relationship between the different forms patriotism can take (i.e., blind vs. constructive) and different representations of one's own nation. We considered two types of national symbols representing the nation in terms of confrontation between groups (polarized symbols) and as a unique entity (unpolarized symbols). In Study 1 we found that blind patriotism was positively associated with the degree to which individuals perceived their nation through confrontation whereas constructive patriotism was positively associated with the degree to which individuals perceived their nation as unique entity. In Study 2 we tested how the relationship between blind patriotism and outgroup attitudes changed when the nation was defined either through confrontation or as a unique entity. The results emphasize the essential role of the specific meaning associated to the nation when studying patriotism and its relation to outgroup attitudes.     

When and why is helping others good for well‐being? The role of belief in reciprocity and conformity to society's expectations

This research investigates the relation between informal help and subjective well‐being and its underlying mechanisms using a cross‐national perspective. We focus on two potential mechanisms derived from the self‐determination theory and conformity to the social norms literature. From the standpoint of self‐determination theory, helping others is good for well‐being if it is intrinsically motivated, rather than driven by the expectation of reciprocity. On the other hand, from the perspective of the conformity literature, helping others is associated with a higher well‐being when it is linked to the benefits of social conformity, such as social approval. We tested these hypotheses using the data from a total of 23 countries. The results provided support for both mechanisms. First, we found that the lower individuals' beliefs in reciprocity are, the stronger is the positive effect of self‐reported helping behavior on their well‐being. Second, helping behavior was more strongly related to life satisfaction in countries where providing help represents a strong social norm (measured with two different cultural indicators). We conclude that both individual‐ and culture‐level mechanisms account for the relation between prosocial behavior and well‐being. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is Weiner's attribution‐help model stable across cultures? A test in Brazilian subcultures

The effect of attribution of responsibility on the intention to help is a well‐studied effect. The Weiner model of attribution‐emotion‐help is the main theoretical development to describe the structural relation between these variables. Some research results have suggested that culture influences the relation between model variables. Collectivists tend to show more compassionate emotions independent of attribution of responsibility whereby emotion is no longer a mediator. The present research aims to test the Weiner model in Brazil, a country with established subcultures and clear distinctions in the collectivism–individualism dimension across its regions. An experiment with 1,569 participants from all five Brazilian regions was conducted. Path analysis revealed that more socially oriented participants tended to feel more compassion for the experimental scenario's protagonist, independent of controllability manipulation, decreasing the effect of emotions in the model. These results depict the effect of culture on the model, questioning the stability of the model across cultures.     

Frequency,not age of acquisition,affects Italian word naming

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the claim that age of acquisition (AoA) and word frequency effects are reduced or nonexistent in languages that have very regular letter-to-sound mappings, like Italian. The first two experiments (Exp. 1, Exp. 2) showed that frequency variables affect reading aloud and lexical decision in Italian. Variables interpretable as pertaining to a semantic component, including AoA, affected lexical decision but not reading aloud. In Experiments 3 and 4, a measure of frequency—child written word frequency (ChFreq)—and AoA were manipulated. Reading performance was affected by word frequency but not by AoA (Exp. 3), whereas lexical decision was affected by both variables (Exp. 4). In Experiments 5 and 6, ChFreq and AoA were manipulated orthogonally. Only frequency affected reading aloud, with no main effect or interaction involving AoA (Exp. 5). The effects of AoA and frequency interacted in Experiment 6 for lexical decision due to a larger effect of AoA for low frequency words than high frequency words. These results show that in languages with a transparent orthography word frequency may affect reading aloud in the absence of an effect of AoA because Italian readers employ lexical nonsemantic reading aloud. The effect of child written frequency points to the efficiency of the mappings between those orthographic and phonological word forms that were frequently encountered when learning to read.     

The semantic structure of vision verbs: A psycholinguistic investigation of Italian

The aim of the present study was to investigate the semantic dimensions that contribute to the mental representation of vision verbs in Italian. In Experiment 1, a group of experts (psychology faculty members) was asked to list the semantic attributes necessary for describing a set of Italian vision verbs (Phase 1) and a group of students rated the extent to which each of these attributes was appropriate to characterise these verbs (Phase 2). In Experiment 2, the conceptual organisation of vision verbs was assessed through Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) using direct judgements of pairwise similarity between vision verbs (e.g., “vedere-guardare”). The results show that six of the attributes generated in Phase 1 are useful for describing the pattern of similarity ratings obtained in Experiment 2, namely attention, certainty, cognitive content, control, duration, and intentionality.