Multinational data show that conspiracy beliefs are associated with the perception (and reality) of poor national economic performance

While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception (and reality) of poor economic performance at the national level. To test this notion, we surveyed 6723 participants from 36 countries. In line with predictions, propensity to believe conspiracy theories was negatively associated with perceptions of current and future national economic vitality. Furthermore, countries with higher GDP per capita tended to have lower belief in conspiracy theories. The data suggest that conspiracy beliefs are not just caused by intrapsychic factors but are also shaped by difficult economic circumstances for which distrust might have a rational basis.     

Science and technology development in the third world: Competing policy perspectives

A planned strategy of engagement, in order to benefit from, and contribute to Western science and technology, should be the major focus of science and technology policy in the Third World. What is needed is a strategy of vigorous and innovative engagement which will be based on an open approach to Western science and technology, a dynamic model of science development integration and institutional reforms for qualitative improvements in the social structure of science in the Third World. Reprinted from Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Spring 1990, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 3–20. His research interests include comparative science and technology policy, organizational behavior, and sociology of change and modernization.     

Noncontingent positive and negative feedback during maximal exercise.

A closed skill, maximal effort on a bicycle ergometer was used to study the effects of noncontingent external feedback on performance, perceived effort, and the subject's assessment of the quality and accuracy of the feedback. The 47 subjects included elite athletes as well as physical education majors. They were asked to perform a series of 5 60-sec. trials of maximal effort, trials which included positive, negative, positive and negative, and no-feedback conditions. Although there were no significant effects on performance for the various feedback conditions, subjects judged the positive feedback favourably and as accurate, but negative feedback was judged unfavourably and considered to be inaccurate. This result is seen as supportive of the 1982 McCarrey, et al. supposition that successful athletes may have less need to internalize attributions of effect.     

The Narratives of Shia Madurese Displaced Women on Their Religious Identity and Gender Citizenship: A Study of Women and Shi’as in Indonesia

Journal of Religion and Health - This article explores expressions in how the local Shi’as Muslim women refugees define and interpret their religious identity and gender citizenship in...     

Health Care Expenditure and Economic Growth in SAARC Countries (1995–2012): A Panel Causality Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between health care expenditure (HCE) and economic growth and to the causality between HCE and economic growth in the selected South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries by employing the Panel cointegration and panel causality analysis over the period 1995–2012. Per capita income, labor force, literacy rate, and elderly population of age 65 and above are used an independent variables, as these variables are considered as main indicator of human and physical capital. For examining the time series properties of the data and long run relationships between HCE and economic growth, the panel unit root and panel cointegration tests are employed. The panel Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method is used to estimate long run parameters, whereas the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method is employed to estimate the short run parameters. For the panel causality among HCE and per capita GDP, a new technique developed by Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) is used. The results reveal that income elasticity of HCE is less than unity in the long run as well as in the short run. Furthermore, there is an evidence of unidirectional causality running from per capita GDP to HCE in the South Asian countries in the short run. Two-way causation between per capita GDP, labor force, literacy rate, and elderly population of age 65 and above is also observed. We also found two-way causality between labor force, elderly population of age 65 and health care expenditure.     

Do as I Do: The Effect of Teachers’ Ethical Leadership on Business Students’ Academic Citizenship Behaviors

We studied the impact of teachers’ ethical leadership on students’ moral identity and academic citizenship behaviors. Data from 256 student–teacher matching dyads were collected from one of the top 5 Pakistani business schools. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to ensure factorial validity of the measures that were employed, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using structural regression models that utilized structural equation modeling in AMOS with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Based on social learning theory, the results supported the hypothesis that teachers’ ethical leadership had significant direct and indirect positive effects (i.e., through the students’ moral identity) on the students’ academic citizenship behaviors that were directed toward other students and the school. This study contributes to existing literature on ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior by highlighting useful implications of these organization-based constructs in an academic context.     

Towards a Common Civilization

An address given on 3 April 1997 at the Institute of Islamic Understanding, Malaysia (IKIM) on the occasion of the official visit of H.E. Prof. Dr Roman Herzog, President of the Federal Republic of Germany     

An investigation of an Expanded Encapsulate Model of Social Identity in Collective Action (EMSICA) including perception of threat and intergroup contact to understand support for Islamist terrorism in Indonesia

Although there have been many empirical studies of terrorism within the psychology literature, relatively few studies have theorized terrorism from the perspective of collective action theory. The present study aimed to understand factors that predict support for Islamist terrorism by using the Encapsulate Model of Social Identity in Collective Action (EMSICA) perspective. To extend previous studies, we added perception of threat and intergroup contact to the model. A correlational study using 66 terrorism detainees in Indonesia as participants found solid support for our expanded EMSICA. The models extending EMSICA with perception of threat and quantity of contact as predictors had improved fit indices and explained more variance in the dependent variable support for Islamist terrorism, as compared to the standard model. Social identity had a significant direct effect on support for Islamist terrorism and mediated the effect of intergroup contact, perception of threat, perceived injustice, and group efficacy on support for Islamist terrorism.