The socialization of the gifts of tongues and healing in Mexican Pentecostalism

Mexican Pentecostalism emphasizes both speaking in tongues and faith healing as religious manifestations which believers should have. Although they are considered to be given by the Holy Spirit, these practices imply a socialization with the collective of followers. The analysis of pentecostal groups in the urban environment of Mexico City and in the rural Totonac Indian communities shows that these religious practices and beliefs are very similar in the two areas mentioned. It is necessary for the pentecostal believer to learn the ‘proper’ way to speak in tongues and to heal the sick, in order to separate followers from other religions which compete with pentecostalism by offering ritual possession and alternative forms of curing human suffering. In Mexico, popular spiritualism, the Catholic charismatic movement and traditional Indian curers all offer direct competition for pentecostalism. The religious mobility further complicates this situation. The important role of public discourse and testimony is also dealt with here.     

Describing organizations as reinforcer systems: A new use for job satisfaction and employee attitude surveys

Job satisfaction data on managerial personnel were used to illustrate how organizations can be differentiated and described as reinforcer systems. Twenty-seven specific satisfaction scales were regressed on overall job satisfaction, separately for each of five groups of managers from five organizations. For all groups, overall satisfaction was found to be determined mainly by scales concerning challenge of the job and prospects of one's chosen career. Application of decremental stepwise multiple regression procedures to obtain minimum-variable-set equations resulted in different, though overlapping, sets of variables in the equations for the different organizations. These results suggest a way of describing organizations as reinforcer systems, in terms of the specific determinants of overall satisfaction for the organization.     

Job demands,coping, and impacts of occupational stress among journalists: a systematic review

This paper systematically reviews empirical research published from 2002 to July 2015 investigating journalists’ occupational stressors, coping strategies, and the impacts of these variables on the health and well-being of such professionals, whether on their daily work or as special envoys to critical scenarios. A meta-analytic approach was displayed to analyse the association between exposure to traumatic events during work and journalists’ symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Twenty eight articles met the inclusion criteria and revealed that very few studies distinguish (and none compare) the distress of journalists in their daily work from the distress of reporting major disasters, not a single study addressed positive emotional responses and only one research study focused on an in-depth analysis of the most commonly used coping strategies by journalists. The impacts of occupational stress among these professionals were sorely negative (e.g., burnout, PTSD), and no study was found to address the design and assessment of preventive interventions for these impacts on the health and well-being of journalists. Thirteen studies were included in a random-effects model meta-analysis and a small to moderate effect size (r = 0.272) between exposure to traumatic events during assignments and PTSD was found. The article closes with directions for future studies.     

Choice confidence in the webrooming purchase process: The impact of online positive reviews and the motivation to touch

The webrooming purchase process (i.e. searching for information online and then buying the product offline) is the most extended cross‐channel shopping behaviour. With the aim of offering a better understanding of this behaviour, this research relies on information processing and uncertainty reduction theories to propose that consumers use the online information to make the offline purchase with a higher degree of confidence. We examine the effects of a previous online interaction with a product on the preferences and decision at the physical store, as well as on the outcomes of the experience. In this path to purchase, we analyse how positive online customer reviews, as a specific form of electronic word of mouth, help the consumer to improve their experience, given their great potential to reduce the consumer's uncertainty in a purchase situation. In addition, the role of the motivation to touch the product is examined. The results of two studies show that the combination of an online search and an offline purchase improves the consumers' purchase experience in pre‐choice variables (i.e. purchase intentions), choice and post‐choice variables (i.e. search‐process satisfaction and choice confidence). Moreover, reading a positive online customer review influences choice confidence, and all the variables considered in the research when it is received at the physical store. Finally, the results stress the importance of the motivation to touch when studying multichannel shopping behaviour, given its direct and moderating effects on the webrooming purchase process. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Negation in context: Evidence from the visual world paradigm

Literature assumes that negation is more difficult to understand than affirmation, but this might depend on the pragmatic context. The goal of this paper is to show that pragmatic knowledge modulates the unfolding processing of negation due to the previous activation of the negated situation. To test this, we used the visual world paradigm. In this task, we presented affirmative (e.g., her dad was rich) and negative sentences (e.g., her dad was not poor) while viewing two images of the affirmed and denied entities. The critical sentence in each item was preceded by one of three types of contexts: an inconsistent context (e.g., She supposed that her dad had little savings) that activates the negated situation (a poor man), a consistent context (e.g., She supposed that her dad had enough savings) that activates the actual situation (a rich man), or a neutral context (e.g., her dad lived on the other side of town) that activates neither of the two models previously suggested. The results corroborated our hypothesis. Pragmatics is implicated in the unfolding processing of negation. We found an increase in fixations on the target compared to the baseline for negative sentences at 800?ms in the neutral context, 600?ms in the inconsistent context, and 1450?ms in the consistent context. Thus, when the negated situation has been previously introduced via an inconsistent context, negation is facilitated.     

Personality, motivational and situational determinants of regular and occasional use of smokeless tobacco

This study evaluated the effects of personality, motivational, and situational factors on Regular (n=191) and Occasional (n=80) users of smokeless tobacco (SLT) products. The participants completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), Spielberger’s State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI) and Anger Expression (AX) Scale, and questionnaires designed to evaluate the reasons why SLT-Users begin, continue, and are motivated to use smokeless tobacco. Occasional Users had higher scores than Regular Users on the EPQ Extraversion scale; no other personality differences were found between these groups. Ratings of the importance of the reasons for beginning to use tobacco products were quite similar for the Regular and Occasional Users; novelty and enjoyment were ranked highest by both groups. In contrast, Regular Users rated 7 of the 10 reasons for continuing to use tobacco as significantly more important than Occasional Users; enjoyment, stimulation and management of emotions were ranked as most important by both groups. Findings that smokeless tobacco products enhanced positive affect and intellectual stimulation, and reduced anxiety and boredom were generally consistent with Eysenck’s Diathesis Stress Model.     

Distress in response to emotional and sexual infidelity: evidence of evolved gender differences in Spanish students

The authors studied gender differences in response to hypothetical infidelity in Spanish students. Using a forced-choice methodology, the authors asked a sample of 266 participants to indicate which kind of infidelity would be more distressing: emotional or sexual. Men were significantly more distressed by sexual infidelity than were women, and women were significantly more distressed by emotional infidelity than were men. Results supported the hypothesis that particular infidelity types, which resemble adaptive problems that human beings faced in the past, contribute to the psychology of jealousy. The results are consistent with previous cross-cultural research.