Shia as Internal Others: A Salafi Rejection of the ‘Rejecters’

Conflict and polemic between Sunni Muslims and Shiites have a long history. In the contemporary era, this polemic has been accentuated by the conflictual situation in the Middle East, and it is also colouring the minority Muslim situation. This article is concerned with Islamic interpretations related to ‘othering’, taking as its main focus an analysis of publications on a Swedish Sunni website, ‘Maktabah Dâr-ul-Hadîth’, which has clear Salafi leanings. Reports show that Shiites currently feel threatened by Salafis in minority contexts and the material cited in this article ‘others’ Shiite Islam and Shiites (amongst others), creating a stereotypical image that may have the potential to influence sectarian violence in real life. Several of the texts on the website deal with theological issues concerning the alleged false beliefs of Shiites. However, the article does not focus on theological creed but rather on manhaj, the programme for action, that is, the behaviour towards Shiites that is recommended in various situations, such as at work, in greeting Shiites or being invited to a Shiite wedding, thus affecting everyday situations. The analysis looks into what kind of ‘othering’ is promoted and what effect this othering might have if put into practice.     

Exemplars in the mist: the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic

The idea that people often make probability judgments by a heuristic short-cut, the representativeness heuristic, has been widely influential, but also criticized for being vague. The empirical trademark of the heuristic is characteristic deviations between normative probabilities and judgments (e.g., the conjunction fallacy, base-rate neglect). In this article the authors contrast two hypotheses concerning the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic, the prototype hypothesis (Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) and the exemplar hypothesis (Juslin & Persson, 2002), in a task especially designed to elicit representativeness effects. Computational modelling and an experiment reveal that representativeness effects are evident early in training and persist longer in a more complex task environment and that the data are best accounted for by a model implementing the exemplar hypothesis.     

The transportability of multisystemic therapy to Sweden: short-term results from a randomized trial of conduct-disordered youths

This randomized clinical trial assessed the effectiveness of multisystemic therapy (MST) for 156 youths who met the diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder. Sweden's 3 largest cities and 1 small town served as the recruiting area for the study. A mixed factorial design was used, with random allocation between MST and treatment as usual groups. Assessments were conducted at intake and 7 months after referral. With an intention-to-treat approach, results from multiagent and multimethod assessment batteries showed a general decrease in psychiatric problems and antisocial behaviors among participants across treatments. There were no significant differences in treatment effects between the 2 groups. The lack of treatment effect did not appear to be caused by site differences or variations in program maturity. MST treatment fidelity was lower than that of other studies, although not clearly related to treatment outcomes in this study. The results are discussed in terms of differences between Sweden and the United States. One difference is the way in which young offenders are processed (a child welfare approach vs. a juvenile justice system approach). Sociodemographic differences (e.g., rates of poverty, crime, and substance abuse) between the 2 countries may also have moderating effects on the rates of rehabilitation among young offenders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

The role of social cognition in emotion

Although recent research has shown that social cognition and emotion engage overlapping regions of the brain, few accounts of this overlap have been offered. What systems might be commonly or distinctively involved in each? The close functional relationship between social cognition and emotion might be understood in terms of a central role for mental state attribution in the understanding, learning and regulation of emotion. In each of these cases, mental state attributions might be supported by either stimulus-driven or more reflective processes.     

Does adolescent heavier alcohol use predict young adult aggression and delinquency? Parallel analyses from four Australasian cohort studies

While the association between heavy alcohol consumption and aggression has been well documented, the causal direction of this association, particularly at a population level, is disputed. A number of causal sequences have been proposed. First, that aggression leads to heavy alcohol use. Second, that heavy alcohol use leads to aggression. Third, that the association between alcohol use and aggression is due to confounding by (a) sociodemographic variables or (b) delinquency. We report here data from four Australasian prospective longitudinal studies of adolescents, to assess the temporal sequence of heavy drinking and aggression over the period from adolescence to young adulthood. The four cohort studies provide a total sample of 6,706 persons (Australian Temperament Project, n = 1701; Christchurch Health and Development Study, n = 931; Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy, n = 2437; Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study, n = 1637). We use multinomial logistic regression to determine whether early adolescent aggression predicts subsequent age of onset of heavy episodic drinking (HED), after adjustment for concurrent sociodemographic factors and delinquency. We then consider whether HED predicts subsequent aggression, after adjusting for past aggression, concurrent delinquency, and a range of confounders. There are broadly consistent findings across the four cohort studies. Early aggression strongly predicts subsequent HED. HED predicts later aggression after adjustment for prior aggression and other confounders. Policies that alter population levels of alcohol consumption are likely to impact on levels of aggression in societies where HED linked to aggression is more common.     

Care Orientation in the Teens as a Predictor of Young Adult Psychosocial Adjustment

The transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a watershed period in development that carries risk for poor psychosocial adjustment. It also carries potential for positive transitions into the caregiving roles and responsibilities of adult life. Research to date has predominantly focused on adolescent predictors of problematic rather than positive transitions; yet predictors of the latter hold equal (if not greater) promise for informing health promoting interventions. The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to use Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to define patterns of psychosocial adjustment and maladjustment in young adulthood (21-years of age); (2) to examine the unique role of adolescent prosocial behaviour (e.g., volunteering and civic engagement) in promoting adjustment and reducing maladjustment in young adulthood; and, (3) to examine whether protective developmental relationships are maintained after adjustment for other covariates including socio-economic background factors and personality characteristics. Data were drawn from the Victorian cohort of the International Youth Development Study (IYDS; N = 2407), a representative sample of students in Victoria, Australia. Students were assessed in Grade 9 (Mean age = 15-years) and followed up at age 21-years. LPA identified three psychosocial adjustment classes at age 21 defined as: (1) Adjusted (24.8 %); (2) Normative (63.9 %); and, (3) Maladjusted (11.3 %). Adolescent volunteering, belief in a moral order, family opportunities for prosocial behaviour, and commitment to school were associated with enhanced adjustment and reduced maladjustment in young adulthood. Findings highlight the potential benefit of interventions designed to enhance adolescent prosocial behaviours and care orientation in promoting healthy transitions into young adult life.     

A comparison of correlation, calibration, and diagnosticity as measures of the confidence-accuracy relationship in witness identification

The relationship between witness confidence and accuracy (CA) has traditionally been measured by the point-biserial correlation (rpb). Recently, 2 alternative indices for measuring the CA relation have been proposed, namely calibration and diagnosticity analyses (e.g., P. Juslin, N. Olsson, & A. Winman, 1996). In this study, the 3 measures were compared quantitatively using 52 independent data sets. The measures rpb and calibration were weakly correlated, whether computed across earwitness data sets, eyewitness data sets, or all data. Thus, when applied to the same data, these 2 measures sometimes yield different conclusions. A modest relation was observed between the rpb and the diagnosticity of confidence. Finally, calibration and degree of over- and underconfidence covaried with task difficulty, consistent with K. A. Deffenbachers' (1980) optimality hypothesis.     

Semantic processing without conscious identification: evidence from event-related potentials

Three event-related potential (ERP) experiments examined whether semantic content can be accessed from visually presented words that cannot be consciously identified. Category labels were shown to participants, followed by masked, briefly exposed words that were either exemplars of the category or not exemplars. The task was to verify the category, by guessing if necessary, and to identify the word, naming it if possible. Exposure durations were selected to allow identification in approximately half the trials. For identified words, there was a marked difference in the ERP response between in-category and out-of-category words because of an N400 component. For unidentified words, there was a similar although smaller difference. Conscious identification was defined using a variety of approaches: verbal report, 6-alternative forced choice, and binary categorization (in the context of the regression method; A. G. Greenwald, M. R. Klinger, & E. S. Schuh, 1995). By any definition, ERPs for unidentified words showed evidence of semantic processing. In addition, there were differences in the neuronal populations recruited to process above-threshold versus below-threshold words, suggesting qualitative differences.