East–West European Project: Transforming and Shaping Research Through Collaboration

This article tells the story of the journey made by an international research group of social psychologists in their collaborative projects carried out over a number of years after the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989. The article explores some relations between the aims of research conducted during a period of rapid political, social and economic change in Central and Eastern Europe, and the ways these studies were shaped and transformed through collaboration. It shows how the collaboration of researchers in the team affected the development of theoretical concepts and methodological ideas over the years, as well as how the team learned from mistakes. Collaborative efforts cannot be viewed separately from the content of research. Moreover, this international collaborative research has shown that the relationships between institutional and cultural changes cannot be understood by means of comparing phenomena across different countries but by case studies in individual countries.

Social representations of the individual: a post-Communist perspective

Social representations of the individual are examined in three post-Communist Central European nations, i.e. the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and in three West European nations, i.e. Scotland, England and France. All six nations share a common European history since the Renaissance and Humanism, based on such values as freedom, agency, individual rights and individual responsibility. Many of these values were rejected by the Communist regimes in which people lived for 40 years. Extreme forms of individualism developed in certain West European nations during the same period. In view of these historical events we have asked the following questions: Do people in the post-Communist countries of Central Europe, after 40 years of totalitarian collectivism, still adhere to the values of the common European heritage? What is the meaning of ‘the individual’ today, in Western democracies and in Central European post-Communist nations? Which issues are important for the well-being of the individual and how do they relate to the political and economic circumstances of those individuals? The results show that the values of the common European heritage in Central Europe have not been destroyed and that factors relating to the well-being of the individual differ between the two parts of Europe. These data are discussed in terms of the political and economic situations in Central and Western Europe, the relationship between language and social representations and the structure of social representations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Orthodox–Hussite Encounters

This article is a contribution to the ongoing debate about how the pan‐Orthodox vision of unity and the overall Christian vision of Christian unity are co‐related, following the Pan‐Orthodox Council in Crete in June 2016. The first section considers how modern Orthodox relations to ecumenism arose: in particular, how the vision of pan‐Orthodoxy and that of Christian unity were intertwined. The sections that follow concentrate on examples taken from Orthodox–Hussite relations.     

Effects of syllable structure in aphasic errors: implications for a new model of speech production

Current models of word production assume that words are stored as linear sequences of phonemes which are structured into syllables only at the moment of production. This is because syllable structure is always recoverable from the sequence of phonemes. In contrast, we present theoretical and empirical evidence that syllable structure is lexically represented. Storing syllable structure would have the advantage of making representations more stable and resistant to damage. On the other hand, re-syllabifications affect only a minimal part of phonological representations and occur only in some languages and depending on speech register. Evidence for these claims comes from analyses of aphasic errors which not only respect phonotactic constraints, but also avoid transformations which move the syllabic structure of the word further away from the original structure, even when equating for segmental complexity. This is true across tasks, types of errors, and, crucially, types of patients. The same syllabic effects are shown by apraxic patients and by phonological patients who have more central difficulties in retrieving phonological representations. If syllable structure was only computed after phoneme retrieval, it would have no way to influence the errors of phonological patients. Our results have implications for psycholinguistic and computational models of language as well as for clinical and educational practices.     

Theory and Method of Social Representations

This paper gives an overview of social representation theory, definitions of the key terms and of the social processes leading to a representation and to social identity. Six empirical studies are presented and details of their methods and findings are given to illustrate this social psychological approach. These studies are about the ontogenesis of gender, the public sphere in Brazil, madness on British television, images of androgyny in Switzerland, individualism and democracy in post-communist Europe and metaphorical thinking about conception. The methods are ethnography, interviews, focus-groups, content analysis of media, statistical analysis of word associations, questionnaires and experiments. Finally, social representation theory is compared to theories of attitudes, schemata and social cognition.     

Dispositional resistance to change: measurement equivalence and the link to personal values across 17 nations

The concept of dispositional resistance to change has been introduced in a series of exploratory and confirmatory analyses through which the validity of the Resistance to Change (RTC) Scale has been established (S. Oreg, 2003). However, the vast majority of participants with whom the scale was validated were from the United States. The purpose of the present work was to examine the meaningfulness of the construct and the validity of the scale across nations. Measurement equivalence analyses of data from 17 countries, representing 13 languages and 4 continents, confirmed the cross-national validity of the scale. Equivalent patterns of relationships between personal values and RTC across samples extend the nomological net of the construct and provide further evidence that dispositional resistance to change holds equivalent meanings across nations.     

Psychogenic and organic amnesia: a multidimensional assessment of clinical, neuroradiological, neuropsychological and psychopathological features

Psychogenic amnesia is a complex disorder characterised by a wide variety of symptoms. Consequently, in a number of cases it is difficult distinguish it from organic memory impairment. The present study reports a new case of global psychogenic amnesia compared with two patients with amnesia underlain by organic brain damage. Our aim was to identify features useful for distinguishing between psychogenic and organic forms of memory impairment. The findings show the usefulness of a multidimensional evaluation of clinical, neuroradiological, neuropsychological and psychopathological aspects, to provide convergent findings useful for differentiating the two forms of memory disorder.     

Nice or Naughty? The Role of Emotions and Digital Media Use in Explaining Adolescents’ Online Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior

The opportunities and mostly the risks of digital communication technologies for adolescents have been documented extensively in the last two decades, but less is known about how adolescents interact with each other online, especially regarding positive interactions. Moreover, since online prosocial and antisocial behavior have rarely been assessed simultaneously, it is hard to obtain a balanced view of adolescents’ online behavior. Therefore, in this study, we examined both dimensions of online social behavior and how these are related to adolescents’ experienced emotions and their uses of digital media. Findings indicated that participants performed and received more prosocial than antisocial behavior online. Experiencing negative as well as positive emotions was related to online social behavior, and these associations were mediated by adolescents’ use of social and audiovisual media, but not by gaming or functional Internet use. The social sharing of emotions and mood management theory are used to discuss the results.     

Growing Up in a Single-Parent Family and Anger in Adulthood

The aim of this article is to determine the sociodemographic and psychological characteristics (e.g., sex, marital status, work status, age, age of losing the father, seeking psychological help, consumption of medications, degree of anxiety and depression, temperament prone to anger) through which one can predict anger as a personality trait in adulthood, as well as establish an overall anger expression index. The study comprised 155 persons of both sexes whose fathers had passed away due to civil causes (e.g., sudden death caused by illness, traffic accidents, and other accidents) or war activities. The results confirmed that psychological characteristics and developmental age are significant predictors of the development of anger as a personality trait.