Social Correlates of Church Attendance in Three European Catholic Countries

The sociology of religion literature recognizes secularization as an uneven process complicated by individual and country-level variables. However, considerably less attention has been given to how correlates of church attendance vary across divergent settings within a single religious denomination. Employing recent data from Belgium, Ireland, and Slovenia, we test whether the belief, ideological support for the church, and religious commitment correlates of religious behaviour are similar across these Catholic countries and whether there are any remaining country effects influencing church attendance. The results of ordered logit regression models show, on the one hand, the correlates of church attendance are basically the same across the three countries and, on the other, that country effects remain even when controlling for the key explanatory variables and other covariates. These empirical findings suggest the need to develop a more contextual-based understandings of secularization, focusing on the influence of cultural factors operative in nationally-specific settings.     

A young person's game: Immersion and distancing in bar work

Previous research indicates that bar workers report high levels of alcohol consumption, but the bar work experience itself has been little studied as a means to understand health threats associated with this job role. The subjective experience and meaning of bar work was explored in this study by interviewing current and ex-bar workers from a district in an Irish city that had a high density of bars and busy tourism industry. A total of 12 participants took part in focus groups (FGs) and seven in individual interviews. Four themes were identified in a thematic analysis. The central depiction of bar work was of an initial immersion in an intensive lifestyle characterised by heavy drinking, with subsequent distancing from the extremes of the lifestyle. The participants affiliated strongly with the bar work occupational identity, which included alcohol use in group scenarios for drinking during work, after work and on time off. The bar work lifestyle was most intense in the ‘superpub’ environment, characterised by permissive staff drinking norms and reported stress. Although an important identity, bar work was ultimately a transient role. The findings are considered in relation to research on occupation-specific stress and alcohol use, social identity and developmental needs in young adulthood.     

Workplace Helping: Interactive Effects of Personality and Momentary Positive Affect

We investigated interactions between positive affect and personality (empathy and altruism) as predictors of workplace helping. We conducted an experience sampling study with 80 participants, each of whom completed personality instruments and responded to a maximum of 5 electronic surveys per day for 5 workdays. This approach allowed us to study relationships over time between momentary positive affect and workplace helping behavior. We found that affect's relationship with later helping depended on the personality trait of altruism. We also found evidence that the relationship was reciprocal—helping others lead to increased positive affect, but again the relationship depended on altruism.     

Novel evidence in support of the bilingual advantage: Influences of task demands and experience on cognitive control and working memory

The bilingual advantage—enhanced cognitive control relative to monolinguals—possibly occurs due to experience engaging general cognitive mechanisms in order to manage two languages. Supporting this hypothesis is evidence that bimodal (signed language–spoken language) bilinguals do not demonstrate such an advantage, presumably because the distinct language modalities reduce conflict and control demands. We hypothesized that the mechanism responsible for the bilingual advantage is the interplay between (a) the magnitude of bilingual management demands and (b) the amount of experience managing those demands. We recruited adult bimodal bilinguals with high bilingual management demands and examined cognitive control and working memory capacity longitudinally. After gaining experience managing high bilingual management demands, participants outperformed themselves from 2 years earlier on cognitive abilities associated with managing the bilingual demands. These results suggest that cognitive control outcomes for bilinguals vary as a function of the mechanisms recruited during bilingual management and the amount of experience managing the bilingual demands.     

The lower subjective social status of neurotic individuals: multiple pathways through occupational prestige, income, and illness

Subjective social status seems to predict health outcomes, above and beyond the contribution of objective status. The present hypothesis was that neuroticism predicts subjective status and does so via the influence of neuroticism on objective status (i.e., education, occupation, and income), self-perceived illness, and greater negative affect. In turn, lower subjective status would be associated with more severe self-perceived illness. Older adults (N=341) shortly after retirement completed measures of neuroticism, attainment in education, occupation, and salary, and over 2 subsequent years, they completed measures of current subjective status, self-reported illness, and current negative affect. As hypothesized, greater neuroticism was associated with lower subjective status via lower objective status and more severe self-reported illness. However, current negative affect was not associated with subjective status, and subjective status did not predict future poorer subjective health.     

Retrieval‐induced forgetting of emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories

This experiment extended the retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF) procedure from simple, episodic information to emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories. In the elicitation phase, participants generated specific memories from their past in response to negative, neutral, or positive category cues. In the retrieval‐practice phase, they practised retrieving (and elaborated further on) some of the memories for some of the categories. In the final test phase, they tried to recall all memories. Memories that received retrieval practice were recalled more often on final test than baseline memories, whereas memories that were not practised, yet competed with practised memories via a shared category cue, were recalled less often than baseline memories. We discuss the roles of inhibition, competition, emotion, and self‐relevance, and consider what laboratory manipulations of memory might reveal about everyday and pathological personal memory.