Consequences of International Migration on the Size and Composition of Religious Groups in Austria

Scientific knowledge on a population’s religious composition is essential to understand the challenges faced by societies today. It arises in opposition to speculations about the actual size of religious groups that have been increasingly present in the public discourse in Europe for many years. This is particularly the case in Austria where the flows of refugees and migrants coming from the Middle East and Afghanistan have intensified since 2011 and culminated in 2015. These sparked a debate on the actual size of the Muslim population in Austria. This study fills the gap by presenting estimates of the religious composition for 2016 and projections until 2046 based on several scenarios related to the three major forces affecting the religious composition: migration (including asylum seekers), differential fertility and secularisation. The projections demonstrate that religious diversity is bound to increase, mostly through immigration and fertility. We further focus on the role and implications of international migration on the age and sex composition within the six religious groups: Roman Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Muslims, other religions and unaffiliated. We find that the volume and composition of international migrants can maintain youthful age compositions in minority religions—Muslims and Orthodox. Sustained immigration leads to slower ageing but does not stop or reverse the process. The disparity between older majority and younger minority religious groups will further increase the cultural generation gap.     

Moral (dis)engagement with anthropogenic climate change in online comments on newspaper articles

Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is widely acknowledged to be morally significant, but little is known about everyday moralising around ACC. We addressed this gap via quantified thematic analysis of 300 online comments to British newspaper articles on ACC, drawing on Bandura's moral disengagement theory. Moral disengagement through denial of ACC was widespread. Other disengagement strategies, such as palliative comparison and diminishing agency, occurred less often. There was also some moral engagement, most often through assertions of the existence of ACC and/or its harmful effects. Moral disengagement was significantly more common in comments on right wing than left wing newspapers, whereas the opposite was true of moral engagement. Although Bandura's framework provided a useful starting point to make sense of ACC moralising, it did not capture moral concerns that extended beyond its “harm/care” remit. In particular, many “denial” comments included a “dishonesty” discourse, whereby ACC proponents were accused of deception for ulterior motives. To classify this discourse as moral disengagement obscures its engagement with a different set of moral issues around trust and honesty. We suggest that Bandura's theory represents one possible “moral landscape” around ACC and could be extended to encompass a broader range of moral concerns.     

Triarchic Model of Psychopathy: A Brief Measure Among Detained Female Youths

The present study examined the psychometric properties of a brief measure of the Triarchic model of psychopathy based on the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI-Tri-S) among a forensic sample of detained female youth offenders (M = 16.41 years; SD = 1.19 years) from Portugal. Results supported the expected three-factor structure and cross-gender measurement invariance. The YPI-Tri-S showed good psychometric properties in terms of factor structure, internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity. Findings suggest that the YPI-Tri-S is a valid and reliable measure of the Triarchic model of psychopathy, which can be used to assess female juvenile offenders.     

The flourishing–happiness concordance thesis: Some troubling counterexamples

The aim of this article is to explore and critique recent aspirations to bridge the traditional divide between subjective and objective accounts of wellbeing through a psychological concordance thesis, according to which flourishing and happiness will, for psychological reasons, go hand in hand. Two varieties of the concordance thesis are explored, one psychological in origin and the other philosophical, with a special focus on the latter (derived from Aristotle) as it makes more radical psychological claims. Counterexamples are provided and discussed of unhappy and not-happy-enough flourishers, and of happy and not-unhappy-enough non-flourishers. The implications of those counterexamples are elicited, with the conclusion being that normative claims about the relative priority of flourishing over happiness (or vice versa) for wellbeing cannot be avoided with impunity. The concordance thesis does not seem to bear scrutiny, at least not as a thesis about ‘psychological necessity’; however, this leaves both a less demanding ‘rule-of-thumb’ concordance thesis, and a host of complementary theses about flourishing and happiness, intact.     

Validation of the Visual Analogue Scale for Anxiety-Revised and school refusal across anxiety profiles

Background/Objectives

This paper aimed to validate the Spanish version of scores of the Visual Analogue Scale for Anxiety-Revised (VAA-R) in child population, and to verify the existence of anxiety profiles and to relate them to school refusal.

Trust in alternative and professional media: The case of the youth news audiences in three European countries

Abstract

This exploratory paper applying cross-cultural and developmental perspective analyses and discusses trust in alternative media and its relation to trust in professional media, seeking to identify the national specifics of media trust and its developmental patterns. Employing 2016 survey data of Czech, Estonian and Greek youth (aged 14–25, N = 3654) collected as part of the international CATCH-EyoU project (Horizon 2020), the study outlines the typology of media trust, comprising trust in alternative and professional media, and compares social and political predictors influencing media trust in the three countries. The study illustrates the diversity of relations between the two types of media trust, concluding that differences in selected predictors of media trust and the distribution of media trust types across national sub-samples illuminate the strong role national context plays, illustrating the varying pathways development of media trust follows in these varied contexts along socioeconomic and cultural lines.     

Sexting as a predictor of sexual behavior in a sample of Czech adolescents

The purpose of this longitudinal study is to examine the relationship between teen sexting and offline sexual behavior. Using a sample of 1134 Czech adolescents aged 10–18 (M_age = 13.84, SD = 1.94, girls = 58.8%) from 55 schools, the latent growth model of offline sexual behavior with sexting as a time-varying covariate was employed. Participants differed at baseline for offline sexual behavior at both individual and school levels, and they varied in the growth rate of offline sexual behavior at the individual level. Only age and sensation seeking explained the variability at baseline of offline sexual behavior. The positive association between sexting and offline sexual behavior was not constant across time. However, sexting at baseline predicted offline sexual behavior a half year and one year later. Sexting may be treated as a precursor of offline sexual behavior.     

Action‐semantic and syntactic deficits in subjects at risk for Huntington's disease

Frontostriatal networks play critical roles in grounding action semantics and syntactic skills. Indeed, their atrophy distinctively disrupts both domains, as observed in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and Parkinson's disease, even during early disease stages. However, frontostriatal degeneration in these conditions may begin up to 15 years before the onset of clinical symptoms, opening avenues for pre‐clinical detection via sensitive tasks. Such a mission is particularly critical in HD, given that patients’ children have 50% chances of inheriting the disease. Against this background, we assessed whether deficits in the above‐mentioned domains emerge in subjects at risk to develop HD. We administered tasks tapping action semantics, object semantics, and two forms of syntactic processing to 18 patients with HD, 19 asymptomatic first‐degree relatives, and sociodemographically matched controls for each group. The patients evinced significant deficits in all tasks, but only those in the two target domains were independent of overall cognitive state. More crucially, relative to controls, the asymptomatic relatives were selectively impaired in action semantics and in the more complex syntactic task, with both patterns emerging irrespective of the subjects’ overall cognitive state. Our findings highlight the relevance of these dysfunctions as potential prodromal biomarkers of HD. Moreover, they offer theoretical insights into the differential contributions of frontostriatal hubs to both domains while paving the way for innovations in diagnostic procedures.     

Attachment styles and clinical correlates in people at ultra high risk for psychosis

Evidence suggests that attachment styles may influence subclinical psychosis phenotypes (schizotypy) and affective disorders and may play a part in the association between psychosis and childhood adversity. However, the role of attachment in the initial stages of psychosis remains poorly understood. Our main aim was to describe and compare attachment styles in 60 individuals at ultra high risk for psychosis (UHR) and a matched sample of 60 healthy volunteers (HV). The HV had lower anxious and avoidant attachment scores than the UHR individuals (p < .001). Sixty-nine percentage of the UHR group had more than one DSM-IV diagnosis, mainly affective and anxiety disorders. The UHR group experienced more trauma (p < .001) and more mood and anxiety symptoms (p < .001). Interestingly, in our UHR group, only schizotypy paranoia was correlated with insecure attachment. In the HV group, depression, anxiety, schizotypy paranoia, and social anxiety were correlated with insecure attachment. This difference and some discrepancies with previous studies involving UHR suggest that individuals at UHR may compose a heterogeneous group; some experience significant mood and/or anxiety symptoms that may not be explained by specific attachment styles. Nonetheless, measuring attachment in UHR individuals could help maximize therapeutic relationships to enhance recovery.