Religiosity,Gender, and Natural Disasters: A Qualitative Study of Disaster-Stricken Regions in Iran

While religiosity is emerging as one of the more important subjects in disaster management, identifying gender differences in using religion as a coping method has attracted very little attention. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of religiosity on disaster-affected women and men in the setting of Iran. A field-based investigation using a qualitative approach was carried out to achieve the study’s purpose. Data were collected using in-depth unstructured interviews with 25 participants who had been damaged by recent disasters. Two themes, negative and positive effects of religiosity, and five categories were extracted from the data. Women may be influenced by religion more than men, and thus, they can play key roles in strengthening the positive effects of religiosity.     

Focused and Nonfocused Attention in Verbal and Emotional Dichotic Listening: An FMRI Study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify cortical regions which are involved in two dichotic listening tasks. During one task the subjects were required to allocate attention to both ears and to detect a specific target word (phonetic task), while during a second task the subjects were required to detect a specific emotional tone (emotional task). During three attentional conditions of each task, the subjects were required to focus attention to the right (FR) or left ear (FL), while during a third condition subjects were required to allocate attention to both ears simultaneously. In 11 right-handed male subjects, these dichotic listening tasks evoked strong activations in a temporofrontal network involving auditory cortices located in the temporal lobe and prefrontal brain regions. Hemodynamic responses were measured in the following regions of interest: Heschl's gyrus (HG), the planum polare (PP), the planum temporale (PT), the anterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS), the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and the inferior frontal gyrus region (IFG) of both hemispheres. The following findings were obtained: (1) the degree of activation in HG and PP depends on the direction of attention. In particular it was found that selectively attending to right-ear input led to increased activity specifically in the left HG and PP and attention to left ear input increased right-sided activity in these structures; (2) hemodynamic responses in the PT, aSTS, pSTS, and IFG were not modulated by the different focused-attention conditions; (3) hemodynamic responses in HG and PP in the nonforced conditions were the sum activation of the forced conditions; (4) there was no general difference between the phonetic and emotion tasks in terms of hemodynamic responses; (5) hemodynamic responses in the PT and pSTS were strongly left-lateralized, reflecting the specialization of these brain regions for language processing. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories of hemispheric specialization.     

Explicit and implicit cognition: a preliminary test of a dual-process theory of cognitive vulnerability to depression

Two studies were conducted to test a dual-process theory of cognitive vulnerability to depression. According to this theory, implicit and explicit cognitive processes have differential effects on depressive reactions to stressful life events. Implicit processes are hypothesized to be critical in determining an individual's immediate affective reaction to stress whereas explicit cognitions are thought to be more involved in long-term depressive reactions. Consistent with hypotheses, the results of study 1 (cross-sectional; N=237) showed that implicit, but not explicit, cognitions predicted immediate affective reactions to a lab stressor. Study 2 (longitudinal; N=251) also supported the dual-process model of cognitive vulnerability to depression. Results showed that both the implicit and explicit measures interacted with life stress to predict prospective changes in depressive symptoms, respectively. However, when both implicit and explicit predictors were entered into a regression equation simultaneously, only the explicit measure interacted with stress to remain a unique predictor of depressive symptoms over the five-week prospective interval.     

Ethnoracial Origins, Social Capital, and Earnings

The purpose of this article is to analyse ethnoracial differences in income attainment, as well as differences in earnings that can be attributed to social capital. The data set is the Ethnic Diversity Survey, a large survey of Canadians conducted by Statistics Canada in 2002. Bivariate and multivariate analyses show that ethnoracial minorities are disadvantaged when compared with the British or whites in general. This disparity remains even after controlling for a host of theoretically relevant variables. The brunt of this disadvantage is experienced by male visible-minority immigrants. Although social capital is shown to exert an independent effect on earnings, its benefit varies by social origins, types of social capital, birth, and gender. Trust is important for females’ earnings but not for males’. Family contact and religious participation benefits British males’ earnings more than those of visible-minority males. Religious participation also benefits those born in Canada more than those who immigrated to Canada. In contrast, female immigrants benefit from their associational participation more than females born in Canada.     

The Path of Least Resistance: Using Easy-to-Access Information

Abstract— Recent work on judgment and decision making has focused on how people preferentially use cues, or pieces of relevant information, that are easy to access when making decisions. In this article, we discuss a framework for understanding the ways that cues become accessible. We begin by identifying two components of cues and show how these components can become accessible during different parts a decision process. We highlight evidence for the use of accessible information and discuss implications for future research on heuristics.     

Students’ Ethical Behavior in Iran

Most of research on fostering ethical behavior among students has taken place in US and Europe. This paper seeks to provide additional information to both educators and organizations about the ethical perceptions of Iranian students by investigating the effect of gender on students’ ethical behavior. The authors developed and administered a quantitative questionnaire to a sample of 203 individuals currently pursuing accredited degrees at one of the public universities in Iran. Statistical analysis revealed that male students have a significantly less ethical behavior in three factors (selfishness, academic cheating and computer ethics) than female students. While the topic of students’ ethical behavior and its relationship with gender has been extensively studied before, there have been contrasting findings by different researchers. This paper is among the very few first researches conducted among Iranian university students to investigate the effects of gender on students’ ethical behavior under the four categories of violation of school regulations, selfishness, academic cheating, and computer ethics, hence making an important contribution to the ethics literature on the developing countries, since the study was conducted in Iran.     

A Social Ecological Approach to Investigating Relationships Between Housing and Adaptive Functioning for Persons with Serious Mental Illness

This paper seeks to advance mental health—housing research regarding which factors of housing and neighborhood environments are critical for adaptive functioning, health, and recovery for persons with serious mental illness (SMI). Housing and neighborhood environments are particularly important for persons with SMI because of the prevalence of poor housing conditions among this population. Most mental health—housing research has been limited by a focus on problems in environments and functioning. The paper seeks to expand the mental health—housing research agenda to consider protective factors that promote community integration and adaptive functioning. We provide an account of how social ecology theory transformed a research program, from examining individual risk factors to investigating the functioning of persons in the contexts of their housing and neighborhood experiences. The resulting housing environment framework—physical aspects of housing and neighborhoods, social environment of neighborhoods, and interpersonal relationships tied to housing—allows for identification of opportunities for health promotion and facilitation of participation in community-based settings. This program of research draws upon several methods to understand the social experience of persons with SMI living in community settings—survey research, qualitative interviews, Geographic Information Systems, participatory research, and visual ethnography. In this paper, we present how social ecology theory was instrumental in the development of new housing environment measures, the selection of appropriate research methods, and framing research questions that are building a new empirical base of knowledge about promoting adaptive functioning, health, and recovery for persons with SMI living in community settings.     

When ethics create misfit: Combined effects of despotic leadership and Islamic work ethic on job performance,job satisfaction,and psychological well-being

This study applies social exchange and person–environment fit theories to predict that despotic leaders tend to hinder employee job performance, job satisfaction, and psychological well-being, whereas employees' own Islamic work ethic (IWE) enhances these outcomes. Also, IWE moderates the relationship of despotic leadership with the three outcomes, such that it heightens the negative impacts, because employees with a strong IWE find despotic leadership particularly troubling. A multi-source, two-wave, time-lagged study design, with a sample (303 paired responses) of employees working in various organisations, largely supports these predictions. Despotic leadership and IWE relate significantly to job performance, job satisfaction and psychological well-being in the predicted directions, except that there is no significant relationship between IWE and job satisfaction. A test of moderation shows that the negative relationships of despotic leadership with job outcomes are stronger when IWE is high. These findings have pertinent implications for theory, as well as for organisational practice.     

Rights and Morals, Issues, and Candidate Integrity: Insights into the Role of the News Media

In recent American political discourse, elections and debates tend to be presented by the news media as collisions of basic principles, with opposing parties advancing beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. When news coverage of an election campaign focuses on issues that emphasize rights and morals, voting behavior may be affected in two ways: Citizens become likely to form and make use of evaluations of the integrity of the candidates, and citizens become motivated to seek an issue-position "match" with candidates on those issues for which discourse is ethically charged (particularly when they hold a similar interpretation of the issue). These ideas were tested in an experiment in which labor union members and undergraduate students were presented with news stories about the contrasting positions of fictional candidates for elective office. Across three political environments, all information was held constant except for systematic alteration of a different issue in each environment. These three issues (abortion, gun control, and health care) vary in the types of value conflicts emphasized in news coverage. The results shed light on how individuals process, interpret, and use issue coverage in choosing among candidates.