The Social Context of Organized Nonbelief: County‐Level Predictors of Nonbeliever Organizations in the United States

Many recent social scientific studies have noted that the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise, but few have examined the nonbeliever organizations that some of these “nones” might join. This study uses an original data set, the first attempt at documenting the population of local nonbeliever organizations in the United States, to explore where these groups are more likely to flourish. Though one might assume that less religious counties, as measured by the percentage of those with no stated religious affiliation, would be more likely to contain nonbeliever organizations, this article provides evidence that they emerge more frequently and in greater numbers in counties with proportionally more evangelical Protestants. The percentage of evangelicals among a county's population is strongly associated with both the existence (dichotomously coded) and the number of nonbeliever organizations, even when controlling for a range of demographic and institutional factors.     

Creative Self-Efficacy: An Exploration of Its Antecedents,Consequences, and Applied Implications

Creativity and innovation are at the core of important outcomes such as economic and sales growth, production of articles and students' learning. Thus, it is not surprising to find research articles on creativity and innovation across different disciplines such as business, psychology, and education. Given the importance of understanding creativity and innovation, we reviewed the empirical literature examining the antecedents and consequences of creative self-efficacy in the work domain. Our review used the theory of individual creative action and social cognitive theory as guiding frameworks to place creative self-efficacy in the creativity and innovation process, define creativity and innovation, explore how creative self-efficacy has been measured, examine the antecedents and consequences of creative self-efficacy, point out gaps in knowledge and offer suggestions for future research and provide some applied implications. One important finding was that creative self-efficacy has made a significant contribution as a process variable explaining how several organizational and personal factors influence creative outcomes via their influence on creative self-efficacy.     

Familiarity increases subjective positive affect even in non-affective and non-evaluative contexts

Previous research shows that the experience of familiarity involves the experience of positive affect. In two experiments we clarify and extend this research by showing that the experience of familiarity involves the experience of positive affect even when the nature of the experimental task is non-affective and non-evaluative and even when participants are actively performing other cognitive operations—that the association of familiarity and positive affect is not disrupted by (non-affective and non-evaluative) judgments regardless of whether familiarity does or does not play a role in those judgments. Experiment 1 used a non-affective but evaluative task and Experiment 2 a completely non-evaluative task. Both studies manipulated familiarity through re-exposure and showed that processing familiar stimuli induced a pleasurable subjective experience.     

Differentiation of Self,Mate Selection,and Marital Adjustment: Validity of Postulates of Bowen Theory in a Spanish Sample

This research investigates relationships between differentiation of self, mate selection, and marital adjustment in a Spanish sample of 118 heterosexual couples (N = 236). In line with Bowen theory, greater differentiation of self and greater similarity in partners' differentiation of self levels each predicted greater marital adjustment. Contrary to theory, gender differences were observed on the S-DSI, with males showing higher total differentiation scores than females, and hypothesized links between differentiation of self and mate selection were not observed. Implications for therapy and suggestions for future research with the S-DSI are discussed.     

Perceiving emotions: Cueing social categorization processes and attentional control through facial expressions

Individuals spontaneously categorise other people on the basis of their gender, ethnicity and age. But what about the emotions they express? In two studies we tested the hypothesis that facial expressions are similar to other social categories in that they can function as contextual cues to control attention. In Experiment 1 we associated expressions of anger and happiness with specific proportions of congruent/incongruent flanker trials. We also created consistent and inconsistent category members within each of these two general contexts. The results demonstrated that participants exhibited a larger congruency effect when presented with faces in the emotional group associated with a high proportion of congruent trials. Notably, this effect transferred to inconsistent members of the group. In Experiment 2 we replicated the effects with faces depicting true and false smiles. Together these findings provide consistent evidence that individuals spontaneously utilise emotions to categorise others and that such categories determine the allocation of attentional control.     

Are future generations that belong to language minorities entitled to group rights?

In this article, I investigate to what extent future generations that belong to language minorities are entitled to group rights that protect their linguistic identity. In particular, I assess whether these future generations are entitled to assistance rights, symbolic claims, self-government rights and exemptions from the law. To address this I outline three arguments supporting group rights for current generations and raise the question of whether these arguments, which are true for current generations, will also be true for future generations. The answer defends the entitlement of future generations to group rights against two counterarguments. The first is that future generations have no interest in preserving their language and therefore there is no normative justification for group rights. The second is that there is a duty to eliminate group rights in order to avoid malign consequences of these rights for future generations.     

Three Decades of State Feminism and Gender Equality Policies in Multi-governed Spain

Spain’s evolution from an authoritarian regime to a well-established multi-governed democracy in a short period of time, has been accompanied by incredibly rapid social change and a varied (depending on the governmental period), but overall steady, consideration of gender equality as a political priority. This has also led to the rapid development and consolidation of women’s and equality machineries–state feminism–and well-established policies devoted to promoting gender equality over the last three decades, both at national and regional governmental levels. This article aims to present a consolidated policy area which has enough elements to survive and to keep on developing, although in an increasingly fragmented manner, among regions, despite the ongoing economic crisis and the conservative political turn. Based on theories of state feminism and discursive politics, this article analyzes four important elements for understanding this claim and the evolution of national and regional Spanish gender policies and institutions during the last three decades: women’s machinery, the relations between that machinery and women’s and feminist movements, the policy discourses present in gender equality policies, and the policy instruments used by those machineries and policies.     

Assessment of Anxiety in Older Adults: Translation and Psychometric Evaluation of the German Version of the Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS)

Anxiety occurs frequently among older adults, and can have deleterious impacts on the quality of daily life. Due to the dearth of well-validated elder-specific anxiety screening instruments available in the German language, this study aimed to translate the Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS), a reliable and valid 30-item self-report screening instrument for assessing anxiety based on DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria (Segal et al. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 24(7), 709–714, 2010a), into German, and to validate the new measure. The German version of the GAS was developed through a translation and back translation process, with careful attention paid to culturally-sensitive expressions of anxiety in the German older adult population. The final version of the German GAS was tested in a sample of 242 community-dwelling older adults (M_age?=?72.0 years, SD?=?6.9 years; 59 % women) who completed either an online (26 %) or a paper-pencil (74 %) version of the questionnaire. The findings confirmed the successful translation of the GAS into German and provided psychometric support for the new measure. The validation of the factor structure based on confirmatory factor analyses was in support of a unidimensional structure of the GAS-G. Correlational analyses with inventories measuring anxiety related and non-anxiety related personality traits additionally confirmed the convergent and discriminant validity of the GAS for use as an assessment measure for anxiety among German older adults.     

The Heritability of Job Satisfaction Reconsidered: Only Unique Environmental Influences Beyond Personality

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which genetic and environmental influences explain differences in job satisfaction and its relationship to personality in order to explain the heritability of job satisfaction.

Design

Behavior genetic analyses are based on a dataset containing 622 individuals, including 185 MZ (M = 39.5 years) and 126 DZ twin pairs (M = 40.1 years).

Findings

The results showed that all genetic influences (28 %) on job satisfaction could be explained by its relation to personality, especially Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, representing a high genetic overlap between job satisfaction and personality. Non-shared environmental influences explained the remaining three fourths of the variance.

Implications

By showing that genetic influences of job satisfaction overlap completely with personality, including common non-additive genetic influences, the results support an interactionist view of job satisfaction in that both situational and dispositional determinants of job satisfaction are relevant.

Originality

In contrast to previous studies, we used a more appropriate behavior genetic approach meaning that our approach allows to directly estimate parameters of specific and common (additive and non-additive) genetic and environmental influences. Building on this, interpretations of behavior genetic findings were explained in detail to avoid common misunderstandings.

     

Social-cognitive antecedents of hand washing: Action control bridges the planning–behaviour gap

Objectives. To examine motivational and volitional factors for hand washing in young adults, using the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) as a theoretical framework.

Design. In a longitudinal design with two measurement points, six weeks apart, university students (N = 440) completed paper-based questionnaires.

Main outcome measures. Prior hand washing frequency, self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, intention and action planning were measured at baseline, and coping planning, action control and hand washing frequency were measured at follow-up.

Results. A theory-based structural equation model was specified. In line with the HAPA, the motivational factors of self-efficacy and outcome expectancies predicted intention, whereas the volitional factors of planning and action control mediated between intention and changes in hand washing frequency. Action control was confirmed as the most proximal factor on hand washing behaviour, thus representing a bridge of the planning–behaviour gap.

Conclusions. Both motivational and volitional processes are important to consider in the improvement of hand hygiene practices. Moreover, the statistically significant effects for planning and action control illustrate the importance of these key self-regulatory factors in the prediction of hand hygiene. The current study highlights the importance of adopting models that account for motivational and volitional factors to better understand hand washing behaviour.