Religion and Spirituality in Lonely Planet's India

For years, the authors of the best-selling guide to India, Lonely Planet, has shaped the perspectives of many travellers. This article considers how religion is constructed as a category and how it is made relevant to travellers. I argue that ‘religion’ comes in two versions, one pertaining to the Indian hosts and one to travellers. Religion is based on tradition, faith and historical institutions, whose members, rituals and sacred sites are of interest to travellers. Spirituality has to do with the personal development of travellers and is exclusively referred to as philosophy.     

Adult Attachment Orientations and College Student Distress: The Mediating Role of Problem Coping Styles

In this study, the authors examined relations among adult attachment orientations, maladaptive problem coping styles, and a composite measure of current distress within a sample of 55 undergraduates (17 men, 38 women). Results indicated that each adult attachment orientation and each problem coping style measure was related in expected directions to students' distress. In addition, problem coping styles largely mediated the impact of insecure adult attachment orientations on distress. Implications of our findings to advancing an attachment theory‐informed perspective on college student coping, distress, and intervention are discussed.     

The role of behavioral experience in judging risks.

This study used conditional risk assessments to examine the role of behavioral experiences in risk judgments. Adolescents and young adults (ages 10-30; N = 577) were surveyed on their risk judgments for natural hazards and behavior-linked risks, including their personal experiences with these events. Results indicated that participants who had experienced a natural disaster or engaged in a particular risk behavior estimated their chance of experiencing a negative outcome resulting from that event or behavior as less likely than individuals without such experience. These findings challenge the notion that risk judgments motivate behavior and instead suggest that risk judgments may be reflective of behavioral experiences. The results have implications for health education and risk communication.     

NO QUICK FIXES: ADDING CONTENT ABOUT WOMEN TO ECOLOGY COURSE MATERIALS

This study reports on a three-semester model project designed to assess the impact of enriched content related to Women's and Gender Studies on students enrolled in an undergraduate ecology course. The two constructs of interest were (a) students' attitudes toward women in science and society and (b) students' assessment of the classroom climate for women. The data included 398 matched pretest and posttest survey responses from a control group, a minimal enrichment group, and an increased enrichment group. Findings indicated that, although small course revisions did not influence students' attitudes toward women in science and society, such revisions had a positive influence on students' assessments of the classroom climate.     

The Performance of Pre‐Founding Entrepreneurial Teams: The Importance of Learning and Leadership

Entrepreneurial teams often struggle with simultaneous task and team challenges at an early stage of new venture creation. The way in which teams shape their teamwork is key in leveraging performance in the pre‐founding phase. Learning should help the team in establishing good teamwork and in expanding its members’ entrepreneurial capabilities. Leadership is needed to facilitate and guide this learning. Accordingly, we investigated learning and leadership as facilitators of performance in the pre‐founding phase. Specifically, we examined team reflexivity as a collective internal learning process and boundary spanning behaviour as an externally directed individual activity, operating at different levels in fostering team and individual performance. Charismatic team leadership was examined as a catalyst of learning, shaping team and individual performance ultimately. The multilevel mediation model was tested based on data from 196 members of 58 teams of a venture creation programme. Team reflexivity predicted team and individual performance. Boundary spanning behaviour was not related to performance. As hypothesised, charismatic team leadership predicted team and individual performance, both mediated by team reflexivity. This research highlights the relevance of team learning in pre‐founding teams and emphasises leadership in shaping learning and moving new ventures forward.     

The reasonably prudent person,or me?

Abundant research concerning the role of the self in social judgment suggests that people have a strong tendency to evaluate others’ actions, preferences, and values with regard to their own. Reliance on self-standards contrasts with the legal standard of the reasonably prudent person (RPP) standard, which presumably represents the behavior of the average person in the community. In three studies that investigated judgments of harmful actions, we compared the influence of self-standards (“How likely would I behave in this manner?”) and RPP estimates (“How likely would the average, reasonable person in the community behave in this manner?”). In each study, self-standards influenced participants’ judgments of guilt and the acceptability of the defendant's actions more than did judgments about what a RPP would do. Studies 2a and 2b also investigated attitudinal differences in susceptibility to RPP consensus manipulations. Participants judged a target who committed murder in self-defense, and also projected their own hypothetical behavior in the scenario. When the manipulated RPP disapproved of the murder, the target was deemed more culpable, but only among participants who themselves were unwilling to commit the hypothetical act. Participants who expressed willingness to murder in self-defense were unaffected by RPP information, regardless of whether or not it was consistent with their own stance. Hence, RPP information at best exerted minimal influence on juridical judgments, and only among certain participants. Implications of these findings for legal applications of the RPP, and for the role of the self in social judgment, are discussed.