How Collective Participation Impacts Social Identity: A Longitudinal Study from India

A key issue for political psychology concerns the processes whereby people come to invest psychologically in socially and politically significant group identities. Since Durkheim, it has been assumed that participation in group‐relevant collective events increases one's investment in such group identities. However, little empirical research explicitly addresses this or the processes involved. We investigated these issues in a longitudinal questionnaire study conducted at one of the world's largest collective events—a month‐long Hindu festival in north India (the Magh Mela). Data gathered from pilgrims and comparable others who did not attend the event show that one month after the event, those who had participated (but not the controls) exhibited heightened social identification as a Hindu and increased frequency of prayer rituals. Data gathered from pilgrims during the festival predicted these outcomes. Specifically, perceptions of sharing a common identity with other pilgrims and of being able to enact one's social identity in this event helped predict changes in participants' identification and behavior. The wider significance of these data for political psychology is discussed.     

Voice in the Head: The Road Ahead

Purpose

The paper seeks to explore the interrelation among the phenomena of wandering mind, free-floating self and intuitive dualism. Further, the paper aims at looking at the possibility of revising the self-conception by changing the wandering nature of mind.

Method

The paper proceeds by demonstrating the existence of the wandering mind and the presence of a particular kind of reflexive self-conception and then contends that reflexive self-conception, characterised in terms of free-floating nature of the self, can be understood to be the result of intuitive dualism along with the wandering mind.

Result and Discussion

The relationship between wandering mind and reflexive self-conception brings out the possibility of revising the reflexive self-conception through practices such as mindfulness because it opens ways to reflexively realise embodiment and reduces the wandering nature of mind. This can possibly give rise to a different kind of self-conception that is more holistic in outlook and is less separative or free-floating.

     

Efficacy and well‐being in rural north India: The role of social identification with a large‐scale community identity

Identifying with a group can contribute to a sense of well‐being. The mechanisms involved are diverse: social identification with a group can impact individuals' beliefs about issues such as their connections with others, the availability of social support, the meaningfulness of existence, and the continuity of their identity. Yet, there seems to be a common theme to these mechanisms: identification with a group encourages the belief that one can cope with the stressors one faces (which is associated with better well‐being). Our research investigated the relationship between identification, beliefs about coping, and well‐being in a survey (N = 792) administered in rural North India. Using structural equation modelling, we found that social identification as a Hindu had positive and indirect associations with three measures of well‐being through the belief that one can cope with everyday stressors. We also found residual associations between participants' social identification as a Hindu and two measures of well‐being in which higher identification was associated with poorer well‐being. We discuss these findings and their implication for understanding the relationship between social identification (especially with large‐scale group memberships) and well‐being. We also discuss the application of social psychological theory developed in the urban West to rural north India. © 2014 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning to Troubleshoot: Multistrategy Learning of Diagnostic Knowledge for a Real-World Problem-Solving Task

This article presents a computational model of the learning of diagnostic knowledge, based on observations of human operators engaged in real-world troubleshooting tasks. We present a model of problem solving and learning in which the reasoner introspects about its own performance on the problem-solving task, identifies what it needs to learn to improve its performance, formulates learning goals to acquire the required knowledge, and pursues its learning goals using multiple learning strategies. The model is implemented in a computer system which provides a case study based on observations of troubleshooting operators and protocol analysis of the data gathered in the test area of an operational electronics manufacturing plant. The model not only addresses issues in human learning, but, in addition, is computationally justified as a uniform, extensible framework for multistrategy learning.