Examining the indirect effects of religious orientations on well‐being through personal locus of control

Religiosity often positively correlates with well‐being. Some orientations towards religion may, however, adversely affect well‐being by decreasing perceptions of personal locus of control—a critical antecedent of mental health. We examined this possibility in a New Zealand‐based national sample of religiously identified adults (N = 1486). As predicted, fundamentalism had a negative indirect effect on life satisfaction, but a positive indirect effect on psychological distress. Conversely, people's intrinsic religious orientation had a positive indirect effect on life satisfaction, but a negative indirect effect on psychological distress. Notably, all four indirect effects were transmitted through personal, but not God, locus of control. These results highlight the diversity of religious orientations and show that religious orientations that deemphasize people's personal locus of control have negative consequences for well‐being.     

On the Psychological Function of Nationalistic “Whitelash”

A noticeable feature of the political discourse accompanying the rise of nationalism in white‐majority countries is that white people fare worse than other ethnic groups in their societies. However, it is unclear based on the extant literature why group‐based relative deprivation (GRD) would correlate with majority‐group nationalism. Here, we propose that the psychological function of nationalism for majority‐group members lies in its ability to assuage the negative feelings arising from GRD. Accordingly, in a New Zealand national probability sample (N = 15,607), we found that GRD among whites was negatively associated with well‐being. However, we also found an opposing indirect association mediated by nationalism. GRD was associated with higher nationalism, which was in turn associated with higher well‐being. These findings suggest that endorsing beliefs about national superiority is one way a nation’s dominant ethnic group can cope with the negative psychological consequences of perceiving that their group is deprived.     

On the dimensionality of the Dispositional Hope Scale

The Dispositional Hope Scale (DHS; C. R. Snyder et al., 1991) consists of two subsets of items measuring Agency and Pathways. The authors used bifactor analysis to evaluate the dimensionality structure of the scale. Data from 676 persons (295 psychiatric patients, 112 delinquents, and 269 students) were analyzed. The authors conclude that although the Pathway items seem to explain some additional variance when the Hope scale variance is partionalized out, the DHS allows unidimensional measurement.     

A Meta‐Analysis of Self‐Attributions Following Three Types of Trauma: Sexual Victimization,Illness, and Injury1

Victim self‐attributions (e.g., that one caused an event or was responsible for its occurrence) have been discussed frequently in the trauma literature. However, little empirical work has sought to test the extant theoretical models conceptualizing why self‐attributions occur. We investigated by meta‐analysis the prevalence and predictors of self‐attributions following 3 traumatic events—sexual victimization, illness, and severe injury—in an attempt to identify predictors of self‐attributions and to examine extant theoretical models. The results supported that self‐attribution is not the modal response to trauma. In addition, partial support was found for the extant theoretical models, but no one model could explain the entire pattern of findings. Implications of these results for future empirical and theoretical work are discussed.     

Price as a quality or sacrifice cue: Role of goal orientation

Prior research seems to have neglected the factors that influence consumers to use price information as an indicator of quality or sacrifice. Based on the concept of 'goal looms larger', Study 1 in the present research demonstrated that the extent to which consumers use price information as an indicator of quality or sacrifice is a function of consumer goal (promotion focus vs prevention focus). Study 2 demonstrated that extremeness aversion is a function of consumer goal. The extent of extremeness aversion is significantly greater for prevention-focused consumers than for promotion-focused consumers.     

Psychological Distress and Help Seeking in Rural America

The implications of exposure to acute and chronic stressors, and seeking mental health care, for increased psychological distress are examined. Research on economic stress, psychological distress, and rural agrarian values each point to increasing variability within rural areas. Using data from a panel study of 1,487 adults, a model predicting changes in depressive symptoms was specified and tested. Results show effects by size of place for men but not for women. Men living in rural villages of under 2,500 or in small towns of 2,500 to 9,999 people had significantly greater increases in depressive symptoms than men living in the country or in larger towns or cities. Size of place was also related to level of stigma toward mental health care. Persons living in the most rural environments were more likely to hold stigmatized attitudes toward mental health care and these views were strongly predictive of willingness to seek care. The combination of increased risk and less willingness to seek assistance places men living in small towns and villages in particular jeopardy for continuing problems involving depressed mood.     

Issues in the assessment of fear: Response concordance and prediction of avoidance behavior

A large group of female subjects completed a battery of questionnaires including the Fear Survey Schedule and the Snake Questionnaire. They were later administered a behavioral approach test with a live snake during which self-report, behavioral, and psychophysiological measures were collected. These data were initially used to test Hodgson and Rachman's (Behavior Research and Therapy, 1974,12, 319–326) hypothesis that response concordance varies directly with the strength of emotional arousal. The results indicated that the less fearful subjects produced a greater degree of response concordance—contrary to the hypothesis. Next, previously identified factors extracted from the Snake Questionnaire were examined to determine their ability to predict behavioral avoidance during the test procedure. One factor was suitably predictive of the avoidance criterion. These two sets of results are discussed in terms of a possible explanation for concordance variations and in terms of the potential value of factor scores in subject selection and fear assessment.     

Semantic universals in sentence processing and interpretation: A study of Chinese,finnish, Japanese,and Slovenian speakers

The universality of certain aspects of sentence interpretation was investigated with native speakers of a variety of language families.Ss were given, in their own language, the same 156 affirmative and 156 corresponding negative sentences to sort into categories solely on the basis of sentence samples. The categories represented semantic sentence interpretations based on information value and nonsensicality.Ss generally sorted the same sentences (translation equivalents) into the same categories: e.g., Informative,The person is a man; Redundant,The man is a person; Contradictory,The chair is a spouse; Amphigorously Redundant,The chair is not a spouse. A semantic feature analysis indicates thatSs base their interpretations on particular interactions of features. Sets of rules and operations utilizing such feature combinations are formulated and attributed to theSs. Such knowledge is postulated to be universal to speakers of all languages.     

Phonology,reading, and Chomsky and Halle's optimal orthography

Chomsky and Halle claim that an orthography based on their underlying phonological representations (UPR) of lexical items would be optimal for English. This paper challenges three of C & H's basic phonological assumptions, that their vowel shift rule is valid, that the UPR is the only sound representation to be listed in the lexicon, and that derived words do not appear as wholes in the lexicon. A less abstract phonological representation level based on the conscious perceptions of speakers, the surface phonemic (SPR), is proposed. An SPR-based orthography has advantages which a UPR-based orthography would not: it is easy to learn and teach, it can be learned at an early age, and it permits rapid detection of rhyme. It is concluded that an orthography based on SPRs, and not UPRs, would be optimal.This research was supported in part by Office of Education contract OEC-9-71-0036(508), project 1-0527, to D. Steinberg and R. Krohn.     

An investigation of the normative and factor analytic composition of six questionnaires used for subject selection

Six self-report instruments which have been widely used for subject screening were administered to large samples of males and female college students. Normative information and bivariate correlations between scales were derived. Principal components analysis was applied to the individual scales to determine substructures. Finally, factor scores from the scales were examined in terms of second-order factors from an additional principal components analysis. The results are discussed in terms of comparisons with the results of previously published reports and implications for the discriminant validity of the scales and factor scores. The use of factor scores for more homogeneous subject selection is suggested.We wish to thank Arnold Holzman, Cynthia Volinsky, Ellen Tuckner, and Patricia Tolchin for their assistance in administering the questionnaires. Appreciation is also extended to Paul Malloy for his aid and suggestions concerning data analysis and to an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments which improved the quality of the final report. This study was conducted while the first author was at the State University of New York at Binghamton.