“This one’s on me!”: Differential well-being effects of self-centered and recipient-centered motives for spending money on others

Motivation and Emotion - Past research reliably shows that spending money on others (termed prosocial spending) makes people happier than spending money on oneself. The present research tested...     

Enhancing the care of children with chronic diseases through the narratives of patient,physician, nurse and carer

We tested the hypothesis that a narrative approach may enhance a bio‐psycho‐social model (BPS) in caring for chronically ill children. Forty‐eight narratives were collected from 12 children with six different medical conditions, their mothers, physicians, and nurses. By a textual analysis, narratives were classified on their predominant focus as disease (biological focus), illness (psychologic focus), or sickness (social focus). Sixty‐one percent of narrative’ text were classified as illness, 28% as disease and 11% as sickness. All narratives had a degree of illness focus. Narratives by patients and physicians on the one hand, and nurses’ and mothers’ on the other were disease focused. Narratives were also evaluated with respect to the type of medical condition: Illness was largely prevalent in all but Crohn’s disease and HIV infection, the latter having a predominance of sickness most probably related to stigma. Narrative exploration proved a valuable tool for understanding and addressing the needs of children with complex conditions. Narrative approaches allow identification of the major needs of different patients according to health conditions and story tellers. In the narratives, we found a greater illness and disease focus and surprisingly a low sickness focus, except with HIV stories. Narrative medicine provides a tool to strengthen the BPS model in health care.     

Expectations in Romantic Relations and Psychological Well-Being of Adolescents in Pakistan: Moderating Role of Parental Support

The objective of the current study was to investigate the role of perceived parental support as a moderator in the association between adolescents’ expectations in romantic relations and their psychological well-being. The sample consisted of 647 adolescents (boys = 285, girls = 362). Their age ranged from 16 to 18 years (M = 17.19 years, SD = .77) and they were regular students in different colleges of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. They completed the Perceived Parental Support Scale, the Well-being Questionnaire-W-BQ12 and the Romantic Relations Scale for Adolescents. The results showed that there were significant gender differences on expectations in romantic relations and psychological well-being with girls scoring higher than boys on expectations in romantic relations while boys scoring higher than girls on psychological well-being. The results also indicated that there was a significant negative association between expectations in romantic relations and psychological well-being. Findings of the moderation analysis showed that perceived parental support moderated the association. Simple slope analysis indicated that there was a significant negative slope for low and medium levels of perceived parental support while the slope was non-significant for high levels of perceived parental support. These results indicated that perceived parental support counters the negative effect of expectations in romantic relations on psychological well-being during adolescence. It is suggested that perceived parental support is important in planning interventions to improve the well-being of adolescents.     

Compliance with EU Law and Argumentative Discourse: Representing the EU as a Problem-Solving Multilevel Governance System through Discursive Structures of Argumentation

Argumentation - This paper analyzes how, during the Juncker Presidency (2014–2019), the European Commission employed argumentative strategies to address the question of member-states’...     

The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States

Despite Greta Thunberg's popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public's willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using cross-sectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N = 1,303), we investigate the “Greta Thunberg Effect,” or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective efficacy and intentions to engage in collective action. We find that those who are more familiar with Greta Thunberg have higher intentions of taking collective actions to reduce global warming and that stronger collective efficacy beliefs mediate this relationship. This association between familiarity with Greta Thunberg, collective efficacy beliefs, and collective action intentions is present even after accounting for respondents’ overall support for climate activism. Moderated mediation models testing age and political ideology as moderators of the “Greta Thunberg Effect” indicate that although the indirect effect of familiarity with Greta Thunberg via collective efficacy is present across all age-groups, and across the political spectrum, it may be stronger among those who identify as more liberal (than conservative). Our findings suggest that young public figures like Greta Thunberg may motivate collective action across the U.S. public, but their effect may be stronger among those with a shared political ideology. Implications for future research and for broadening climate activists’ appeals across the political spectrum are discussed.     

Will you confess to what I did? Close relationships and in-group membership facilitate voluntary blame-taking

To learn more about why people falsely confess without external pressure, we examined voluntary blame-taking in three experiments. Drawing from theories of prosocial behavior and social identity, we investigated whether participants' blame-taking is influenced by (a) their relationship with the guilty person (Experiment 1) and (b) the group membership of the person asking to take the blame (Experiments 2a and 2b). In Experiment 1, participants (N = 130) considered whether they would take the blame for a small traffic violation for their best friend and a stranger in a vignette-scenario. As expected, intended blame-taking rates were higher for their best friend (60.8%) than for a stranger (8.5%). Reported reasons for taking the blame included reciprocity and empathy. In Experiments 2a and 2b (Ns = 60; 89), we tested actual blame-taking behavior in two field experiments, using a new experimental paradigm. An experimenter approached participants and asked them to commit insurance fraud for a broken camera. Participants who shared the same group as the person in need were more willing to take the blame (47%-48%) than participants who were from a different group (21%-23%). The most frequently listed reason for taking the blame was empathy. Implications for the occurrence of voluntary blame-taking behavior to protect someone else are discussed.     

Theodicy in a Deterministic Universe: God and the Problem of Suffering in Vyāsatīrtha’s Tātparyacandrikā

International Journal of Hindu Studies - The classical traditions of Vedānta in India explored the problem of why an omnipotent being like God would permit sentient beings to suffer in His...     

Midline Thalamic Damage Associated with Alcohol-Use Disorders: Disruption of Distinct Thalamocortical Pathways and Function

Neuropsychology Review - The thalamus, a significant part of the diencephalon, is a symmetrical and bilateral central brain structure. The thalamus is subdivided into three major groups of nuclei...