The revenge of the Jinns: spirits, Salafi reform, and the continuity in change in contemporary Ethiopia

The point of departure for this article is a story about jinns taking revenge upon people who have abandoned earlier religious practices. It is a powerful account of their attempt to free themselves from a past viewed as inhabited by evil forces and about the encounter between contemporary Salafi reformism and a presumed disappearing religious universe. It serves to prove how a novel version of Islam has superseded former practices; delegitimized and categorized as belonging to the past. The story is, however, also an important source and an interesting entry-point to examine the continued relevance of past practices within processes of reform. Analyzing the story about the jinns and the trajectory of Salafi reform in Bale, this contribution demonstrates how the past remains intersected with present reformism, and how both former practices and novel impetuses are reconfigured through this process. The article pays attention to the dialectics of negotiations inherent to processes of reform and points to the manner in which the involvement of a range of different actors produces idiosyncratic results. It challenges notions of contemporary Islamic reform as something linear and fixed and argues that such processes are multifaceted and open-ended.     

How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life Satisfaction Data?

This paper explores the degree to which the new data on life satisfaction from the Gallup World Poll are comparable to those used in previous empirical studies, predominantly those from the World Values Survey. Differences might arise due to the timing and anchoring of questions in the Gallup data. The paper identifies a set of large outlier countries, and estimates suggest that the two datasets tend to generate rather different results, questioning the degree to which they measure the same concept.     

A phenomenological survey of auditory verbal hallucinations in the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states

The phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) occurring in hypnagogic and hypnopompic (H&H) states has received little attention. In a sample of healthy participants (N = 325), 108 participants reported H&H AVHs and answered subsequent questions on their phenomenology. AVHs in the H&H state were found (1) to be more likely to only feature the occasional clear word than to be clear, (2) to be more likely to be one-off voices than to be recurrent voices, (3) to be more likely to be voices of people known to the individual than unknown persons, (4) to be more likely to talk directly to the person rather than not, and (5) to only rarely give commands, ask questions, or to result in an interactive conversation. Their phenomenology was similar to normative AVHs in wakefulness (as established by previous research) in that the voice-hearer was usually the target of the voice, and the voice was more likely to be of a recognized person. However, H&H AVHs differed from AVHs in wakefulness in that commands and questions were rare, and there was typically no dialogical engagement with the voice. We conclude by proposing that two distinct types of H&H AVHs may exist (which we term “dialogic” and “monologic”), based on an analysis of the phenomenology of the experience, and suggest avenues for future research.     

Recognizing emotions in spoken language: A validated set of Portuguese sentences and pseudosentences for research on emotional prosody

A set of semantically neutral sentences and derived pseudosentences was produced by two native European Portuguese speakers varying emotional prosody in order to portray anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutrality. Accuracy rates and reaction times in a forced-choice identification of these emotions as well as intensity judgments were collected from 80 participants, and a database was constructed with the utterances reaching satisfactory accuracy (190 sentences and 178 pseudosentences). High accuracy (mean correct of 75% for sentences and 71% for pseudosentences), rapid recognition, and high-intensity judgments were obtained for all the portrayed emotional qualities. Sentences and pseudosentences elicited similar accuracy and intensity rates, but participants responded to pseudosentences faster than they did to sentences. This database is a useful tool for research on emotional prosody, including cross-language studies and studies involving Portuguese-speaking participants, and it may be useful for clinical purposes in the assessment of brain-damaged patients. The database is available for download from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Workaholism and work–family spillover in a cross-occupational sample

This study examined the relationship between three components of workaholism (work involvement, drive, enjoyment of work) and work–family spillover. A cross-occupational sample consisting of 661 Norwegian employees from six different organizations responded to a Web-based questionnaire measuring workaholism and work–family spillover. A short and revised version of the WorkBAT showed that work involvement was positively related to both positive family-to-work spillover and to negative work-to-family spillover. Drive was positively related to both negative work-to-family and negative family-to-work spillover, and negatively related to positive work-to-family spillover. Enjoyment of work was positively associated with positive work-to-family and positive family-to-work spillover. Workaholism is clearly related to spillover. The findings imply that interventions for workers scoring high on work involvement and drive should be emphasized as these dimensions were associated with negative spillover. More research on this area is warranted.     

Treatment of Diogenes Syndrome with Risperidone

Diogenes syndrome is characterized by shameless neglect of the body and personal environment, hoarding, and the rejection of any help. It occurs among patients with and without other psychiatric disorders. The initial treatment should be a behavioral program, but there is no information about the pharmacological treatment of this syndrome. We report the case of a 77-year-old woman with symptoms of Diogenes syndrome. After an unsuccessful behavioral program, treatment with risperidone initially improved the behavioral symptoms but impaired cognitive function, and was followed by marked global deterioration, fulfilling criteria for dementia.     

Cross-cultural invariance of the basic psychological needs in exercise scale and need satisfaction latent mean differences among Greek,Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish samples

ObjectivesThe present study examined the extent to which scores from the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale are measurement invariant across Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish samples of exercise participants.DesignA cross-sectional design wherein responses were analyzed from 504 Greek participants, 518 Spanish participants, 989 Portuguese participants, and 686 Turkish participants.MethodsData on exercise participants' need satisfaction were collected using the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale (Vlachopoulos & Michailidou, 2006) after back translation for the languages involved in the study.ResultsMulti-sample confirmatory factor analyses showed that BPNES scores were largely invariant at the configural, metric, and strong invariance levels, but not at the strict invariance level for Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish samples compared to the Greek sample. Portuguese participants reported higher levels of satisfaction for all three needs compared to Greek participants, while for Spanish participants this was the case only for competence and relatedness. Turkish participants did not differ from Greek participants.ConclusionsThe present findings support valid cross-cultural comparisons at the latent variance/covariance level and the latent/observed mean level of the constructs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness using the BPNES.     

Conversational perspective of therapeutic outcomes: The importance of preference in the development of discourse

Major theme: Evaluation of therapeutic outcome. Logical development of the theme: We suggest a way for practitioners and researchers to assess if they are on track in conversing towards client preferred goals. We offer a critique of more conventional approaches to studying therapeutic progress, suggesting how a discursive (i.e. focused on interaction and language use) lens can address these limitations. Through this lens we examine therapeutic progress evident in ‘preference work’, where clients demonstrably indicate, imply, agree and disagree with where the therapeutic conversation is heading. Such ‘preference work’ offers a form of evidence of within‐session outcomes in a process of reaching larger client preferred outcomes. Authors’ point of view: We present the results of conversation analysis – a qualitative approach to the study of therapy – to illustrate our discursive perspective on therapy progress and change. Implications: we suggest a way for practitioners to assess if they are on track in conversing towards client preferred goals. We propose that our interactional perspective may significantly contribute to bridging practice and research in therapy.     

Hiring Rankings of Immigrant Job Applicants: Immigrants’ Acculturation Strategies and Managers’ Personality Trait Perception

This study examines how non-Western immigrants' acculturation strategies are related to managers' hiring rankings. It examines whether hiring managers differ in personality trait inferences depending on whether the candidate is a Turkish immigrant or a native Norwegian. Managers (N?=?436) evaluated three job applicants in terms of personality and hirability. Across three experimental conditions, the information of one (target) was manipulated and presented as either a native, as an integrated Turkish immigrant, and as a separated Turkish immigrant. The separated Turkish target received lower hirability rankings compared with the other target applicants. The integrated Turkish target was rated as more open, extraverted, conscientious, agreeable, and neurotic than the two other targets. Personality ratings of the Norwegian and the separated Turkish target did not differ significantly. Evaluations of personality were associated with hiring ranking of the Norwegian target only.