The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States

Despite Greta Thunberg's popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public's willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using cross-sectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N = 1,303), we investigate the “Greta Thunberg Effect,” or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective efficacy and intentions to engage in collective action. We find that those who are more familiar with Greta Thunberg have higher intentions of taking collective actions to reduce global warming and that stronger collective efficacy beliefs mediate this relationship. This association between familiarity with Greta Thunberg, collective efficacy beliefs, and collective action intentions is present even after accounting for respondents’ overall support for climate activism. Moderated mediation models testing age and political ideology as moderators of the “Greta Thunberg Effect” indicate that although the indirect effect of familiarity with Greta Thunberg via collective efficacy is present across all age-groups, and across the political spectrum, it may be stronger among those who identify as more liberal (than conservative). Our findings suggest that young public figures like Greta Thunberg may motivate collective action across the U.S. public, but their effect may be stronger among those with a shared political ideology. Implications for future research and for broadening climate activists’ appeals across the political spectrum are discussed.     

A Systematic Review of Self-Report Measures of Negative Self-Referential Emotions Developed for Non-Clinical Child and Adolescent Samples

Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review - The crisis in child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing has prompted the development of school and community-based interventions to tackle...     

Human Rights,Legitimacy, Political Judgement

Res Publica - This paper grapples with Bernard Williams’s prima vista enigmatic assertion that ‘[w]hether it is a matter of good philosophical sense to treat a practice as a violation...     

Letter Therapy: A Model for Enhancing Counseling Intervention

Based on 15 letters between a counselor and a female client, this article outlines and discusses a unique letter therapy process, which is loosely adapted from the Morita Therapy approach to counseling. The five-step Letter therapy approach consists of 1) opening up, 2) focusing on life themes, 3) redirecting toward strengths, 4) reinforcing actions, and 5) affirming a positive attitude toward life. Letter writing has the potential of being used by counselors either in conjunction with face-to-face counseling or as a separate therapeutic method.     

Motivation and anxiety for dental treatment and dental attendance: The roles of the locus of causality personality and treatment styles

The purpose of the present study was to test a self-determination theory model with the following hypotheses: (1) Patients’ autonomous causality personality orientation and oral health care professionals’ autonomy-supportive treatment styles, as perceived by patients, would both be positively indirectly associated with dental attendance through patients’ autonomous motivation for dental treatment. (2) Patients’ controlled causality personality orientation and oral health care professionals’ controlling treatment styles, as perceived by patients, would both be positively indirectly associated with avoidance of making a dental clinic appointment through patients’ anxiety for dental treatment. A sample size of about 200 patients was estimated to be acceptable in detecting moderate effect sizes (independent variables: 5–6; power: .80; p < .05). Student patients (N = 226) responded to a survey with validated questionnaires. Using LISREL, both hypotheses were supported. In addition, patients’ perception of a controlling treatment style moderated the controlled personality—dental anxiety relation, so that a lower controlling treatment style mitigated dental anxiety substantially among patients with a high control orientation. Effect sizes were moderate to large. Analyses (Z-scores) also revealed that the autonomous personality is more strongly linked to situational autonomous motivation than situational autonomy support, whereas a controlled personality and a perceived controlling treatment style are equally and significantly associated to dental anxiety. Both patient personalities and oral health care professionals’ treatment styles are substantially linked to autonomous motivation and anxiety for dental treatment, which are relatively strongly associated with dental attendance and avoiding dental clinic appointments, respectively.     

Multilevel Heterogeneous Factor Analysis and Application to Ecological Momentary Assessment

Psychometrika - Ansari et al. (Psychometrika 67:49–77, 2002) applied a multilevel heterogeneous model for confirmatory factor analysis to repeated measurements on individuals. While the mean...     

Epileptic tendencies in relation to behavioral responses to a novel environment in the Mongolian gerbil

The severity of epileptic-like seizures in gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus), placed in an open field, is directly related to their ambulatory activity on subsequent trials. An inverse relationship, however, occurs between seizure severity and oriented, bipedal rearing behavior on subsequent trials. Principal components and multiple linear regression analyses support the hypothesis that ambulation and rearing have different underlying neuronal mechanisms. If these two activities are considered as measures of arousal and attention, respectively, then epileptic-like seizures may be caused by hyperactivity of mechanisms which induce arousal.     

“What shall we do with the inebriate?” asylum treatment and the disease concept of alcoholism in the late nineteenth century

During the late nineteenth century a number of physicians, sometimes called inebriety specialists, combined a narrowly physicalistic disease concept of alcoholism with a high regard for the curative power of asylum treatment to advocate the development of specialized asylums for the treatment of alcoholism. Central to the idea of such an inebriate asylum was the belief that the power to detain the alcoholic was necessary to cure his disease. This article considers why inebriety specialists held this belief as well as why others opposed it. It also describes alternative approaches to alcoholism and the fate of efforts, during this period, to treat the alcoholic by confining him.