Control over the processing of the opponent’s gaze direction in basketball experts

Basketball players’ responses to an opposing players’ pass direction are typically delayed when the opposing player gazes in another than the pass direction. Here, we studied the role of basketball expertise on this, the so-called head-fake effect, in three groups of participants (basketball experts, soccer players, and non-athletes). The specific focus was on the dependency of the head-fake effect on previous fake experience as an index of control over the processing of task-irrelevant gaze information. Whereas (overall) the head-fake effect was of similar size in all expertise groups, preceding fake experience removed the head-fake effect in basketball players, but not in non-experts. Accordingly, basketball expertise allows for higher levels of control over the processing of task-irrelevant gaze information.     

On the links between positive religious coping,satisfaction with life and depressive symptoms among a multinational sample of Muslims

This study tested the levels and consequences of positive religious coping among a multinational sample of Muslims. The sample consisted of 706 university students recruited in three Muslim countries: Israel/Palestine, Turkey and Malaysia. Participants' average age was 22.61, and 65% of them were females. This investigation applied a cross‐sectional comparative methodology. Measures used: demographics, positive religious coping, satisfaction with life and depressive symptoms. The findings indicated that (a) participants reported high levels of positive religious coping usage, and Malaysians scored significantly higher in this regard than both Palestinians and Turks; (b) positive religious coping correlated positively with satisfaction with life but was not linked to depressive symptoms and (c) the magnitude of correlation between positive and satisfaction with life was significantly higher among Malaysians than among both Palestinians and Turks. The findings suggest that to understand the implications of positive religious coping for the health and well‐being of Muslims, a detailed and nuanced analysis is needed.     

Investigating the measurement structure of the Turkish version of the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale-9

Current Psychology - The Turkish version of the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale-9 (DAS-9) items assesses an individual’s level of endorsement of dysfunctional attitudes associated with...     

Catastrophizing,Depression and Anxiety During Pregnancy: Relation Between Lumbopelvic Pain and Physical/Social Functioning

Catastrophizing, a cognitive behavioral aspect of pain, is defined as an excessively negative orientation against a noxious stimulus. The primary goal of the present study is to assess the association between catastrophizing and lumbopelvic pain intensity during the pregnancy period, the secondary goal is to explore the variation of pain catastrophizing, anxiety and depression, and the tertiary goal is to investigate the relationship between catastrophizing and quality of life. After approval, pregnant women with lumbopelvic pain were invited to join in the study. During admission, participants were asked to complete questionnaires including Pain Catastrophizing Scale, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory-II, and Short Form-36. Age, gravida, parity, number of abortus, number of live-births and the pain intensity score were recorded. A total of 429 women were enrolled in the study. Pain catastrophizing scores showed a fluctuation during pregnancy, and were significantly correlated with the scores of Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, Visual Analog Scale, and Short Form-36 sub-scales including social functioning, vitality, physical functioning and mental health. The present study demonstrated that catastrophizing level shows an alteration throughout the pregnancy period, and variation in catastrophizing shows an approximately similar course with pain intensity, depression and anxiety.     

Locating religion in victory-making: the 1973 war discourse in Egypt

Most of the literature on the Arab–Israeli war in 1973 takes material gains and military advances as measurements that indicate victory or defeat. Accordingly, based on the magnitude of weaponry used and the associated tactics employed, scholarly works declare Egypt or Israel the winner. This article moves away from such ‘materialistic’ accounts of the war’s conclusion by exploring a similarly significant victory-maker: the use of the discourse of religion. By looking at previously untapped official and semi-official texts from the war’s onset through the eight years of President Anwar Sadat’s rule, the article finds this discourse to be composed of three thematic structures. These structures cohere into patterns that facilitated an account of the war as a massive and unquestionable Egyptian ‘victory’. The study also addresses how the interplay of language and religion was so closely attuned to the broader context that included the use of authoritarianism in politics and in the media as well as a so-called Islamic revival. Rather than supposing that the religious references in this discourse may have been in some way truthful, I show that it relied on a set of intentional falsehoods.     

Who is Being Judged Promotable: Good actors,high performers,highly committed or birds of a feather?

The present study investigated the impact of task performance, affective commitment, impression management tactics, and similarity to supervisor on promotability judgments in a collectivist context (i.e., Turkey). Longitudinal and multisource field‐data obtained from 205 subordinates and their 35 supervisors indicated that task performance, affective commitment, and similarity to supervisor influenced supervisors’ ratings of promotability. Yet no significant relationships were found between IM tactics and the promotability judgments. Furthermore, the results revealed a stronger influence of similarity to supervisor on promotion decisions in a collectivist culture.     

American Muslim Physician Attitudes Toward Organ Donation

Religious beliefs and values impact Muslim patients' attitudes toward a variety of healthcare decisions, including organ donation. Muslim physician attitudes toward organ donation, however, are less well studied. Utilizing a national survey of physician members of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, relationships between religiosity, patterns of bioethics resource utilization, and sociodemographic characteristics with attitudes toward organ donation were assessed. Of 255 respondents, 251 answered the target question, “in your understanding, does Islamic bioethics and law permit organ donation?.” 177 respondents (70%) answered positively, 30 (12%) negatively, and 46 (18%) did not know. Despite the overwhelming majority of respondents believing organ donation to be permitted by Islamic bioethics and law, fewer than one-third (n = 72, 30%) are registered donors. Several sociodemographic features had a positive association with believing organ donation to be permitted: ethnic descent other than that of South Asian, having immigrated to the USA as an adult, and male sex. When using a logistic regression model controlling for these three variables as potential confounders, the best predictor of Muslim physicians believing organ donation to be permissible was utilization of an Imam as a bioethical resource (odds ratio 5.9, p = 0.02). Religiosity variables were not found to be associated with views on the Islamic permissibility of organ donation. While Muslim American physicians appear to believe there is religious support for organ donation, only a minority sign up to be donors. Greater study is needed to understand how physicians' attitudes regarding donation impact discussions between patients and physicians regarding the possibility of donating and of receiving a transplant.     

Making Decisions in Foreign Languages: Weaker Senses of Ownership Attenuate the Endowment Effect

Although the number of bilingual consumers is expanding, research on the impact of language on consumer decision making is scarce. The current research examines the endowment effect, which is a fundamental consumer decision‐making regularity, under native versus foreign language processing. I show that the endowment effect, which refers to higher valuation of a given product by sellers than buyers, is attenuated when sellers and buyers process information in a foreign language due to a decrease in sellers’ valuation of the product. I further document empirical evidence for the underlying mechanism of this finding. Thinking in a foreign language diminishes the impact of affective reactions on sellers’ judgment, which results in lowered sense of psychological ownership. This lowered sense of psychological ownership significantly decreases sellers’ valuation to a level comparable to the valuation of buyers. The implications of these results for theory and practice, and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Parenting,Mental Health and Culture: A Fifth Cross-Cultural Research on Parenting and Psychological Adjustment of Children

We examined psychological disorders across cultures and their associations with parental factors (control, inconsistency, and rejection). A questionnaire assessing psychological disorders was administered to male and female adolescents in nine countries. The results showed that psychological disorders differ across cultures. Parental factors are associated with each other and have a great deal of shared variance. The associations between psychological disorders and all parental factors were examined together in one regression and significant associations were found with maternal control, paternal temporal inconsistency, maternal situational inconsistency, paternal rejection and maternal rejection. Parental rejection appears to be a robust and influential factor influencing adolescents’ psychological disorders. The total variance of psychological disorders explained by all the parenting factors was low. The results revealed the flaws of reductionism in research and highlight the importance of studying associations of psychological disorders with various parental factors simultaneously and in conjunction with other familial, social and genetic factors.