“Seeing the Life”: Redefining Self-Worth and Family Roles Among Iraqi Refugee Families Resettled in the United States

Social and geographic displacement is a global phenomenon that precipitates novel stressors and disruptions that intersect with long-standing familial and social roles. Among the displaced are war-torn Iraqi refugee families, who must address these new obstacles in unconventional ways. This study explores how such disruptions have influenced associations between gender and apparent self-worth experienced by Iraqi refugee families upon relocation to the USA. Further, the psychosocial mechanisms requisite of any novel approach to a new social construct are explored and reveal that production in the family is at the core of instability and shifting power dynamics during resettlement, preventing family members from “seeing the life” in the USA that they had envisioned prior to immigration. Over 200 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Iraqi participants and mental health providers were conducted over the course of the study, which demonstrate a plasticity among social roles in the family and community that transcends the notion of a simple role reversal, and illustrate the complex positionalities that families under stress must approximate during such physical and social displacement.     

Still Doing Fine? The Interplay of Negative Life Events and Self‐Esteem During Young Adulthood

This longitudinal study investigated the bidirectional relationship between negative life events and self‐esteem during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood (N = 2272). Drawing on theories of human development over the lifespan and just‐world theory, we analyzed age‐graded changes in self‐esteem and their interplay with negative life events at three measurement points over a 12‐year period. We addressed both the short‐term and the longer term effects of single as well as multiple negative life events on changes in self‐esteem (socialization effects). We further investigated whether the pre‐event level of self‐esteem affected the likelihood of negative life events occurring (selection effects) and, finally, whether it had protective effects in terms of helping people adjust to negative events. Latent change models yielded four main findings: (i) self‐esteem increased during young adulthood; (ii) socialization effects were observed over shorter and longer timespans, but (iii) selection effects were only found for multiple negative life events, with low self‐esteem predicting a high number of negative life events; (iv) high pre‐event self‐esteem acted as a protective factor, attenuating declines in self‐esteem after experience of multiple negative life events. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Revisiting self-regulatory techniques to promote physical activity in older adults: null-findings from a randomised controlled trial

Objective. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted to evaluate a three-hour face-to-face physical activity (PA) intervention in community-dwelling older German adults with four groups: The intervention group (IG) received behaviour change techniques (BCTs) based on the health action process approach plus a views-on-ageing component to increase PA. The second intervention group ‘planning’ (IGpl) contained the same BCTs, only substituted the views-on-ageing component against an additional planning task. An active control group received the same BCTs, however, targeting volunteering instead of PA. A passive control group (PCG) received no intervention.

Design. The RCT comprised 5 time-points over 14 months in N = 310 participants aged 64+.

Main outcome measures. Self-reported as well as accelerometer-assessed PA.

Results. Neither PA measure increased in the IG as compared to the other groups at any point in time. Bayes analyses supported these null-effects.

Conclusion. A possible explanation for this null-finding in line with a recent meta-analysis is that some self-regulatory BCTs may be ineffective or even negatively associated with PA in interventions for older adults as they are assumed to be less acceptable for older adults. This interpretation was supported by observed reluctance to participate in self-regulatory BCTs in the current study.     

Misgendering and Its Moral Contestability

In this article, I consider the harms inflicted upon transgender persons through “misgendering,” that is, such deployments of gender terms that diminish transgender persons' self‐respect, limit the discursive resources at their disposal to define their own gender, and cause them microaggressive psychological harms. Such deployments are morally contestable, that is, they can be challenged on ethical or political grounds. Two characterizations of “woman” proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. When we consider what would happen to transgender women upon the broad implementation of these characterizations within transgender women's social context, we discover that they suffer from two defects: they either exclude at least some transgender women, or else they implicitly foster hierarchies among women, marginalizing transgender women in particular. In conclusion, I claim that the moral contestability of gender‐term deployments acts as a stimulus to regularly consider the provisionality and revisability of our deployments of the term “woman.”     

Social Quality and Happiness—An Analysis of the Survey Data from Three Chinese Cities

Over the last two decades, the focus of happiness research has shifted from the measurement of life quality with an emphasis on material well-being to subjective well-being. This article follows this direction of development, but moves further into social well-being. Utilizing the method of social quality analysis, this study developed an analysis of happiness by looking into the influence of social factors on happiness. The study was established on the basis of empirical data collected from a social quality survey done in Hangzhou, Xiamen, and Shenzhen during 2011–2012. The purpose of this study is to expose the relationships between social quality analysis and happiness studies. The study demonstrates a strong correlation of social quality factors with happiness, although each set of these factors has a different impact on happiness in different factor domains.     

A Probabilistic Model of Criticality in a Sequential Public Good Dilemma

A public good (PG) is a commodity or service made available to all members of a group: its provision depends on the voluntary contribution of its members. Once provided, all members can enjoy the benefits of the PG, regardless of whether they contributed or not; hence, there is a temptation to “free-ride” in the hope that others will contribute. Rapoport (1987) showed that an important factor that affects cooperation (contribution) in a PG dilemma is the extent to which a group member is critical in providing it. Erev and Rapoport (1990) tested a game-theoretic model that yields deterministic predictions about the effects of criticality on cooperation in public good dilemmas. Based on research by Chen, Au, and Komorita (1996), we propose a probabilistic model of criticality. The model is tested and found to fit empirical data. Extensions of the model to situations with uncertain group size or provision point are discussed.     

Evidence for a young adult face bias in accuracy and consensus of age estimates

Adults' face processing may be specialized for the dimensions of young adult faces. For example, young and older adults exhibit increased accuracy in normality judgments and greater agreement in attractiveness ratings for young versus older adult faces. The present study was designed to examine whether there is a similar young adult face bias in facial age estimates. In Experiment 1, we created a face age continuum by morphing an averaged young adult face with an averaged older adult face in 5% increments, for a total of 21 faces ranging from 0 to 100% old. Young and older adults estimated facial age for three stimulus age categories [young (morphs 0–30%), middle‐aged (morphs 35–65%), and older adult (morphs 70–100%)]. Both age groups showed the least differentiation in age estimates for young adult faces, despite showing greater consensus across participants in estimates for young faces. In Experiment 2, young and older adults made age estimates for individual young and older adult identities. Both age groups were more accurate and showed greater consensus in age estimates for young faces. Collectively, these results provide evidence for a bias in processing young adult faces beyond that which is often observed in recognition and normality/attractiveness judgment tasks.     

Implicit motives and basic psychological needs

The present article starts with discussing similarities and differences between conceptualizations of human needs in self‐determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan [1985], Intrinsic motivation and self‐determination in human behavior; Deci & Ryan [2000], Nebraska symposium on motivation: Perspectives on motivation) and motive disposition theory (MDT; McClelland, Human motivation, 1985). The second section focuses on the two‐process model of psychological needs (Sheldon [2011], Psychological Review, 118: 552), which aims to integrate the two approaches, whereas the third section highlights some aspects of both theories that are still decoupled or even contradictory, but nevertheless still have a high potential to be linked. These three aspects are (a) the noncorresponding concepts of implicit power motive (MDT) and basic need for autonomy (SDT); (b) the differentiation of needs into hope and fear components, which is theoretically embedded in MDT, but not in SDT; and (c) MDT researchers’ differentiation into an implicit and explicit motivational system, which is not included in SDT. Particularly, the last section highlights the potential for areas in which further integration is possible, which provides a foundation for comprehensive and exciting research on human motivation.