The New Age paradox: spiritual consumerism and traditional authority at the Child of Nature festival in Russia

This article addresses the paradox of contemporary New Age spirituality, which combines the individualist ideology of the capitalist market with traditional truth claims. The underlying assumption of the New Age—that there is one universal Truth in many guises—supports this type of legitimation. I argue that this paradox can be illuminated from a transcultural ethnographic perspective with the help of the concept of vernacular belief. The emphasis on lived experience reveals the New Age as a mutable and diverse set of practices from which we cannot expect ideological coherence. Analysing the plural ideological landscape of the Child of Nature festival in St Petersburg, this article investigates how its participants deal with competing narratives of universal truth, all of which pivot on one term: ‘Vedic wisdom’.     

Getting a Grasp on Children’s Representational Capacities in Pantomime of Object Use

This study examined how 5- and 9-year-old children (N = 40) produce pantomimes of object use on verbal request. The task required participants to enact an action with an imagined object. Results showed that with age, children (a) proceeded from body part as object to imaginary object and (b) incorporated into their pantomimes more distinctive features of the object and its use. While the first result replicated previous findings with more items and a more sophisticated coding procedure, the latter result revealed new insights. Children’s selection of distinctive features in pantomime was related to their performance on a semantic odd-one-out task that requires the abstraction of specific features without situational support. The discussion focuses on the cognitive requirements of the task and the potential of pantomime being a reflection of children’s representational development. We suggest an explanation of the findings within the more general developmental model of Karmiloff-Smith.     

The Effect of Victims' Social Support on Attributions of Blame in Female and Male Rape

The effects of perceived social support of the victim, victim gender, and participant gender on attributions of blame in rape were examined. The impact of attitudes toward gender roles was also investigated for their mediational role between participant gender and blame. Participants ( N= 121) read a report of an incident of rape and evaluated the victim and the perpetrator. Two ANOVAs showed that social support and participant gender influenced blame attributed to the victim, while victim gender influenced blame attributed to the perpetrator. Socially supported victims were blamed less than were unsupported victims. Men were more blaming of rape victims than were women, but further analyses showed this was mediated by attitudes toward gender roles. Men held significantly more traditional attitudes toward gender roles than did women, and this accounted for the effect of participant gender on victim perceptions. The perpetrator of male rape was blamed less than the perpetrator of female rape. Findings are discussed in terms of the differential attributional mechanisms that may underpin men's and women's reasoning about different types of rape.     

Making sense of male rape: constructions of gender,sexuality and experience of rape victims

This study reports a preliminary investigation into accounting practices for male rape in conversation. Thirty men and women, in dyads, were asked to discuss an incident of male rape presented to them in a vignette. The findings showed that two main issues were discussed: the experience of the rape act and societal responses to male victims. In addition, participants established a ‘hierarchy of suffering’, where rape was judged to be worse for ‘heterosexual’ men than it is for ‘women’ or ‘gay’ men. Hegemonic, phallocentric representations of heterosexuality were mobilized to argue that acts of rape and consensual intercourse are the same for ‘gay’ men and ‘women’ and therefore less traumatic than for ‘heterosexual’ men. This obscures the violence of rape for gay men and women and exonerates perpetrators by minimizing injury sustained. Participants also argued that heterosexual victims are likely to experience ridicule for having departed from hegemonic masculinity. Arguments were constructed to avoid charges of being dismissive towards women and gay men and of victim blaming in relation to heterosexual men. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Uncovering an existential barrier to breast self-exam behavior

The present research applies an analysis derived from terror management theory to the health domain of breast examination, and in doing so uncovers previously unrecognized factors that may contribute to women’s reluctance to perform breast self-examinations (BSEs). In Study 1, when concerns about mortality were primed, reminders of human beings’ physical nature (i.e., creatureliness) reduced intentions to conduct BSEs compared to reminders of humans’ uniqueness. In Study 2, women conducted shorter exams on a breast model (an experience found to increase death-thought accessibility) when creatureliness was primed compared to a uniqueness and no essay condition. In Study 3, after a creatureliness prime, women performed shorter BSEs when a placebo did not provide an alternative explanation for their discomfort compared to when it did. Advances for theory and breast self-exam promotion are discussed.     

Peak-End rule versus average utility: How utility aggregation affects evaluations of experiences

The “Peak-End rule” which averages only the most extreme (Peak) and the final (End) impressions, is often a better predictor of overall evaluations of experiences than average impressions. We investigate the similarity between the evaluations of experiences based on Peak-End and average impressions. We show that the use of the Peak-End rule in cross-experience comparisons can be compatible with preferences for experiences that are better on average. Two conditions are shown to make rankings of experiences similar regardless of the aggregation rule: (i) the individual heterogeneity in the perception of stimuli, and (ii) the persistence in impressions. We describe their effects theoretically, and obtain empirical estimates using data from previous research. Higher estimates are shown to increase correlational measures of association between the Peak-End and average impressions. The high association per se is shown to be not only a theoretical possibility, but an empirical fact.     

Work-based learning: Development and validation of a scale measuring the learning potential of the workplace (LPW)

The current study presents a multi-dimensional scale measuring the learning potential of the workplace (LPW), which is applicable across various occupational settings. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we establish four theoretically relevant dimensions of work-based learning, which together constitute the learning potential of the workplace. The psychometric characteristics of our instrument were examined among a sample of Dutch employees working in different organizations (N = 1013). In this study, we tested the factorial structure and validity of the LPW-scale by conducting Confirmatory Factor Analyses, testing for measurement invariance and determining the scale's reliability. Subsequently, the LPW-instrument was cross-validated using SEM (AMOS 20.0). Furthermore, convergent, divergent, and construct validity were investigated. The results empirically supported the theory based four-factor structure of the LPW-scale and provided solid evidence for the sound psychometric properties of the study's instrument.