Outrage towards whom? Threats to moral group status impede striving to improve via out‐group‐directed outrage

Threats to group status can elicit different responses, ranging from those that motivate striving for improvement to those that motivate defending the threatened social identity. We examine why moral threats to group status may inhibit individuals' striving to improve. Specifically, we predicted that a threat to the group's moral status evokes a defensive emotional focus on the out‐group that impedes individuals' striving to improve. Two studies (N = 76 and N = 90) showed that moral (as opposed to nonmoral) threats elicited more outrage directed at the out‐group and, by trend, less outrage directed at the in‐group. The follow‐up study further demonstrated that moral threat impeded striving for improvement because of the relative focus of outrage on in‐group versus out‐group. Moreover, and consistent with our group‐based analysis, this pattern was most pronounced among strongly identified group members. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of framing groups' shortcomings in moral versus nonmoral terms. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultural–geographical differences in the occurrence of child physical abuse? A meta‐analysis of global prevalence

Our comprehensive meta‐analysis combined prevalence figures of child physical abuse reported in 111 studies, including 168 independent samples with a total of 9,698,801 participants. The overall estimated prevalence was 3/1000 for studies using informants and 226/1000 for studies using self‐report measures of child physical abuse, with no apparent gender differences. Methodological factors partly explained the vast variation of self‐reported prevalence rates in individual studies. The highest prevalence rates were found for studies using a broad definition of child physical abuse, studies measuring physical abuse over the longest period of 0–18 years, studies using college samples, studies in which adults served as respondents, and studies using more questions on physical abuse. Cultural–geographical factors did not seem to affect prevalence rates of physical abuse, which may be partly due to procedural factors. More crosscultural research on physical abuse is badly needed, especially in Africa and South America. We conclude that child physical abuse is a widespread, global phenomenon affecting the lives of millions of children all over the world, which is in sharp contrast with the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child.     

Dealing efficiently with emotions: acceptance-based coping with negative emotions requires fewer resources than suppression

Previous studies have consistently shown that changing or avoiding emotions requires resources and therefore leads to impaired performance on a subsequent self-control task. The aim of the present study was to investigate the extent to which acceptance-based coping requires regulatory resources. Participants who accepted their emotions during exposure to a sad video performed better on a subsequent self-control task than participants who were instructed to suppress their emotions and a control group who received no instructions. These findings suggest that acceptance is an efficient strategy in terms of resources.     

The moral maze: Dutch Salafis and the construction of a moral community of the faithful

The Salafi movement presents itself as a moral guardian of Muslims in a world that, according to many, is filled with moral crisis, temptations and anti-Islam tendencies. Salafis claim that it is essential to return to the community of the pious forefathers seen as the most outstanding community of all times with the highest absolute moral standard. In this article I will show how individual participants engage with this idea of a moral community of believers yet remain vulnerable to the ambiguities and ruptures inherent in everyday life and within the Salafi movement. By exploring how Salafis passionately try to search for the ‘correct’ knowledge and strive to maintain a unity between knowledge, conviction and behavior, and the role of friendships therein, I argue that Salafism does not remain separate from the troubles of everyday but that these issues enter into and exist in Salafi thought and practice, not by being resolved but by being transformed into personal struggles. These ambiguities and ruptures may cause problems but also provide an incentive for Salafis to continuously work at the self-improvement of one’s piety, authenticity, and sisterhood and brotherhood.     

The role of goal adjustment in symptoms of depression,anxiety and fatigue in cancer patients receiving psychosocial care: A longitudinal study

Objective: This study examined whether cancer patients reported increases in their goal adjustment capacities while receiving psychosocial care and whether these increases were related to changes in symptoms of depression, anxiety and fatigue. Goal adjustment was conceptualised as two independent capacities: goal disengagement (i.e. disengage from unattainable goals) and goal reengagement (i.e. reengage into new goals).

Design: This naturalistic, longitudinal study focused on 241 cancer patients receiving psychosocial care at one of the seven psycho-oncology institutions in the Netherlands. Data was collected before the start of psychosocial care (T1) and nine months thereafter (T2). Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the research questions.

Main Outcome Measures: Goal adjustment, symptoms of depression, anxiety and fatigue.

Results: At group level, patients reported small increases in goal disengagement (d = .22) but no significant change in goal reengagement (d = .09). At an individual level, 34% of cancer patients reported an increase in goal disengagement and 30% reported an increase in goal reengagement. Increases in goal reengagement were significantly associated with decreases in both depressive and anxiety symptoms, but not to changes in fatigue.

Conclusion: Findings indicate that particularly improvements in goal reengagement are beneficial for cancer patients’ psychological functioning.     

Finite Mixture Multilevel Multidimensional Ordinal IRT Models for Large Scale Cross-Cultural Research

We present a class of finite mixture multilevel multidimensional ordinal IRT models for large scale cross-cultural research. Our model is proposed for confirmatory research settings. Our prior for item parameters is a mixture distribution to accommodate situations where different groups of countries have different measurement operations, while countries within these groups are still allowed to be heterogeneous. A simulation study is conducted that shows that all parameters can be recovered. We also apply the model to real data on the two components of affective subjective well-being: positive affect and negative affect. The psychometric behavior of these two scales is studied in 28 countries across four continents.