Bicultural identities: The interface of cultural, personality, and socio-cognitive processes

This paper presents recent work examining the meaning and impact of individual variations in the way bicultural individuals organize their two cultural identities, a construct that we call Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). While biculturals high on BII describe their two cultural identities as ‘compatible’ (fluid and complementary), biculturals low on BII experience them as largely ‘oppositional’ (i.e., conflicting and disparate). We first report experimental evidence for how variations in BII moderate biculturals’ socio-cognitive behavior, specifically, the way in which bicultural individuals process cultural knowledge and use it to interpret social behavior. We then report structural equation modeling findings that elucidate some important personality, contextual, and performance predictors of BII. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of how the study of bicultural identities provides an ideal ground for the integration of cultural and personality psychology.     

Social and personal predictors of test anxiety among Norwegian secondary and postsecondary students

Social Psychology of Education - This study examined predictors of test anxiety in a sample of 2528 Norwegian upper-secondary and postsecondary students by means of structural equation modeling....     

Baptism in a Secular Age

In the Western world, the cultural conditions for interpreting and practicing baptism have changed radically in recent decades. An increasing level of religious plurality is one cultural trend that the theology of baptism must take seriously. One option for responding to this challenge is to interpret baptism as a rite of drastic communal transition whereby one enters into the church and leaves the world—with all its plurality—behind. Another option is to view baptism as a rite that, by bringing us into the church's fellowship with God in Christ, draws us into communion with all living creatures and calls upon us to engage in openness toward others.     

Is Confucianism a religion? Modern Confucian theories on the ethical nature of classical discourses

When dealing with the study of diverse Confucian traditions in eastern Asia, we are often confronted by the issue of the religious dimension of Confucianism and how can it be compared to the Western (or ‘general’) connotations of the term. Proceeding from the basic question as to how Confucianism sees itself, the paper focuses on the approaches of two representatives of the Modern Confucian intellectual movement, namely Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan. In addition, we shall also take into consideration the various contemporary Confucian interpretations of the previously delineated problems, for instance Liu Shu-hsien’s or Chen Lai’s. Based on these discourses, the paper clarifies the reasons for Modern Confucian interpretations, according to which Confucianism is not a religion in the Western sense but a discourse that represents both a practical moral teaching and an abstract philosophy of immanent transcendence.     

The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Programme in Kindergartens: Effects of a Universal Preventive Effort

The purpose of this study was to identify preventive effects of the Incredible Years (IY) teacher classroom management (TCM) programme, which is employed in Norwegian kindergartens for 3-year-old to 6-year-old children. IY TCM is a universal preventive intervention intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate types of behaviour and support children’s social- and emotional competence in kindergartens and schools. IY TCM was implemented in 46 kindergartens and compared to 46 matched kindergartens that did not receive the intervention. A total of 1049 children took part in the trial, 511 from the IY TCM group and 538 from the comparison group. Children’s behaviours were measured using well-validated instruments at the beginning and end of a school-year cycle, approximately 9 months later. Findings showed promising reductions in aggression, internalising and attention problems, and increases in social competence in the IY TCM kindergartens. In a sub-sample comprising children who scored equal to or above the 90th percentile on aggressive behaviour before the intervention, promising developments were found in social competence among the children in IY TCM kindergartens. The IY TCM lead to promising preventive effects in young children’s aggressive behaviours, internalisation, attention problems, and social competence in kindergartens in Norway. However, even if the changes were statistically significant, effect sizes were small. For children with severe behaviour problems, few positive results were found.     

Keeping up day-specific effects of transformational leadership: the role of followers’ emotion regulation

This diary study examines the role of day-specific transformational leadership for followers’ personal initiative. Building on Affective Events Theory, we proposed a direct effect of day-specific transformational leadership on followers’ personal initiative on the same day. Furthermore, we took a closer look at lagged effects of day-specific transformational leadership. More specifically, we hypothesized that positive effects of one day’s transformational leadership can endure until the next day for followers who apply beneficial emotion regulation strategies. We conducted a diary study over five consecutive working days among 97 employees. Two-level hierarchical linear modelling supported our hypotheses. As expected, day-specific transformational leadership positively predicted followers’ personal initiative on the same day. Furthermore, concerning the association between day-specific transformational leadership and followers’ personal initiative on the following day, there was a positive relation for followers applying beneficial emotion regulation strategies in terms of high cognitive reappraisal and low expressive suppression, respectively.     

Music is awesome: Influences of emotion,personality, and preference on experienced awe

Awe is a complex, cognitive–conceptual emotion associated with transcendence and wonder. Music has the power to create this kind of transcendence. Can music evoke awe? Previous research demonstrates that awe is associated with individual differences in personality such as openness. This study examined whether different kinds of music across a wide variety of genres can evoke awe and whether the experience of awe depends on individual differences. The study further investigated the relationship of awe to patterns of emotional responses to different dimensions of musical genre. Study 1 demonstrated that high need for cognition and low cognitive closure predicted awe for reflective and complex music, that felt happiness predicted awe for all kinds of music, and that perceived happiness and sadness predicted awe only for reflective and complex music. Study 2 replicated the finding that perceived sadness can evoke awe in reflective and complex music and further demonstrated that experienced musical awe correlates with individual differences in the tendency to experience awe more generally. These results are of interest to advertisers interested in evoking awe with music and marketers interested in segmenting to target the appropriate populations for this purpose.     

Intra-EU Migration: Legal and Economic View on Jobseekers’ Welfare Rights

International migration influences economies of both the home and the host country. Some countries perceive immigration as a threat and consider limitations to their social security system to protect the domestic economy. Within the European Union, both the economic and the legal side of the issue must be taken into account. The paper presents an empirical analysis of natives’ and immigrants’ unemployment rates in EU15 countries and discusses a possible use of the findings in intra-EU migration policy. Using Labour Force Survey Data for 2012, we estimate a series of logistic regressions in order to compare the immigrant/native unemployment rates, considering the differences in the structure of both subpopulations (in terms of age, sex, education and types of jobs). We conclude that a substantial part of the gap between natives’ and immigrants’ unemployment rates can be explained by these additional characteristics in most of the EU15 countries.     

Conceptualizations of Personality Disorders with the Five Factor Model-count and Empathy Traits

Previous research has long advocated that emotional and behavioral disorders are related to general personality traits, such as the Five Factor Model (FFM). The addition of section III in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) recommends that extremity in personality traits together with maladaptive interpersonal functioning, such as lack of empathy, are used for identifying psychopathology and particularly personality disorders (PD). The objective of the present study was to measure dispositions for DSM categories based on normal personality continuums, and to conceptualize these with empathy traits. We used a validated FFM-count method based on the five personality factors (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), and related these to 4 empathy traits (emphatic concern, perspective-taking, fantasy, and personal distress). The results showed that FFM-based PD scores overall could be conceptualized using only two of the empathy traits, low emphatic concern and high personal distress. Further, specific dispositions for personality disorders were characterized with distinct empathy traits (e.g., histrionic with high fantasy, and paranoid with low perspective-taking). These findings may have both theoretical and practical implications in capturing potential for personality disorders with ease and efficiency.     

Exemplars in the mist: the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic

The idea that people often make probability judgments by a heuristic short-cut, the representativeness heuristic, has been widely influential, but also criticized for being vague. The empirical trademark of the heuristic is characteristic deviations between normative probabilities and judgments (e.g., the conjunction fallacy, base-rate neglect). In this article the authors contrast two hypotheses concerning the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic, the prototype hypothesis (Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) and the exemplar hypothesis (Juslin & Persson, 2002), in a task especially designed to elicit representativeness effects. Computational modelling and an experiment reveal that representativeness effects are evident early in training and persist longer in a more complex task environment and that the data are best accounted for by a model implementing the exemplar hypothesis.