Directly assessing the relationship between irrelevant speech and articulatory suppression

Larsen and Baddeley (2003) examine whether the disruption caused by articulatory suppression on immediate memory tasks is similar to or different from the disruption caused by irrelevant speech. Based on experiments in which they test whether the phonological similarity effect is present or absent, they conclude that articulatory suppression and irrelevant speech are different. We assessed whether articulatory suppression and irrelevant speech are similar or different by correlating the disruption each causes. A significant correlation obtained, indicating a relation between the two. These apparently different conclusions can be readily resolved by adopting the view that articulatory suppression, irrelevant speech, and many other factors vary in the degree to which they are likely to cause subjects to abandon reliance on phonological/acoustic cues in particular tasks.     

The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Partisan Preferences in Modern Democracies: Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Voting for Socially Conservative Parties

While there is growing interest in the relationship between pathogen-avoidance motivations and partisanship, the extant findings remain contradictory and suffer from a number of methodological limitations related to measurement and internal and external validity. We address these limitations and marshal the most complete test to date of the relationship between the behavioral immune system and partisanship, as indexed by which party people identify with and vote for. Using a unique research design, including multiple well-powered, nationally representative samples from the United States and Denmark collected in election and nonelection contexts, our study is the first to establish in cross-national data a consistent, substantial, and replicable connection between deep-seated pathogen-avoidance motivations and socially conservative party preferences across multiple validated measures of individual differences in disgust sensitivity and using large representative samples. We explore the relative contribution of the pathogen-avoidance model and sexual strategies for accounting for this relationship.     

Drifting Further Apart? How Exposure to Media Portrayals of Muslims Affects Attitude Polarization

Political discourses about Muslim immigration in the media and on social networking sites (SNSs) are highly contentious and have the potential to further polarize societal segments, which may ultimately harm democratic processes. Especially on SNSs, politicians and citizens can circumvent journalistic filters often resulting in blatant and emotionally charged content. Using a two-wave panel design (N = 559), we investigated how positive and negative portrayals of Muslims in traditional media outlets and on SNSs influence anti-Muslim immigration attitudes among people who either agree or disagree with the encountered information. Our findings indicate that exposure to negative portrayals further reinforces anti-Muslim immigration attitudes among those who agree with the encountered information. In contrast, for those who disagree with the negative information, a backfire effect emerges, showing that anti-Muslim attitudes even decrease. This effect occurs for both SNSs and traditional media. Positive information about Muslims did not result in attitude polarization.     

Emotional stressors among volunteers operating a diaconal suicide-prevention crisis line in Norway: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

Despite the worldwide proliferation of suicide-prevention crisis-line networks, there is limited in-depth knowledge of how the volunteer call responders experience and manage emotional stressors. The study’s purpose was to explore emotional stressors related to operating a diaconal suicide-prevention crisis line, and how these are managed in daily operations. In this qualitative study, 27 volunteers were interviewed in four focus groups. The material was analysed using systematic text condensation. The participants experienced emotional stressors related to being unable to actively intervene, encountering traumatised callers and feeling uncertain about representing the Church. They used a combination of personal coping strategies and organisational support factors. Implications for training and practice are further discussed.