Intragroup social influence and intergroup competition

Three experiments examined the role of intragroup social influence in intergroup competition. In the context of a mutual fate control situation, participants in Experiment 1 demonstrated more intergroup competition in the presence than in the absence of social support for shared self-interest. Experiment 2 revealed that, in the context of a Prisoner's Dilemma Game, this social support effect was stronger when noncorrespondence of outcomes between the interacting groups was low than when it was high. Results from Experiment 3 were consistent with the possibility that the effect of social support is attenuated when noncorrespondence of outcomes is high because under these circumstances intergroup competition is prescribed by a norm of group interest. The implications of these findings for understanding the antecedents of interindividual-intergroup discontinuity are discussed.     

Answering to Future People: Responsibility for Climate Change in a Breaking World

Our everyday notions of responsibility are often driven by our need to justify ourselves to specific others – especially those we harm, wrong, or otherwise affect. One challenge for contemporary ethics is to extend this interpersonal urgency to our relations with those future people who are harmed or affected by our actions. In this article, I explore our responsibility for climate change by imagining a possible ‘broken future’, damaged by the carbon emissions of previous generations (including ourselves), and then asking what its inhabitants might think of our current behaviour, our moral thinking, and our excuses. In particular, I will focus on a simplified scenario where present people can only avoid a broken future by sacrificing Rawlsian favourable conditions. Suppose we refuse to avoid a broken future, on the grounds that we cannot be expected to make such great sacrifices. If the broken future lacks favourable conditions, will its inhabitants accept our excuses? Will they hold us responsible for things we regard as excusable? If so, should we be guided by their judgements or by our own?     

How training and promotion opportunities,career expectations,and two dimensions of organizational justice explain discretionary work effort

Contemporary work is highly interdependent, requiring discretionary work effort (DWE) in response to colleagues and customers. According to social exchange theory, organizational support encourages DWE as a form of employee reciprocation. Our model integrating social exchange and expectancy theory anticipates future career returns from organizational support in the form of training and promotion opportunity. Positive career expectations strengthen feelings of employee obligation that are realized in higher levels of DWE. In addition, career expectations are heightened when these opportunities are provided under procedurally just conditions. Furthermore, the relationship between career expectation and felt obligation is strengthened when interactional justice is high. Using structural equation modeling, these hypotheses are successfully tested on a survey of 201 bank employees and their supervisors. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Ideal Positions: 3D Sonography,Medical Visuality,Popular Culture

As digital technologies are integrated into medical environments, they continue to transform the experience of contemporary health care. Importantly, medicine is increasingly visual. In the history of sonography, visibility has played an important role in accessing fetal bodies for diagnostic and entertainment purposes. With the advent of three-dimensional (3D) rendering, sonography presents the fetus visually as already a child. The aesthetics of this process and the resulting imagery, made possible in digital networks, discloses important changes in the relationship between technology and biology, reproductive health and political debates, and biotechnology and culture.     

To Know Ourselves: Possible Meanings of Canadian Pornography

All television broadcasters in Canada are required to meet Canadian content regulations. This requirement includes sexually explicit adult channels. Whenever this requirement comes to the attention of the media, through a license application or hearing, there is comic speculation about what might be considered Canadian content in pornography. However, a review of some adult films made in Canada show a distinct Canadian pornography already exists. As with other cultural industries, the pornographic film industry in Canada exists in the shadow of American domination, but survives through various means such as product differentiation, appeals to nationalism, and government support. These factors create conditions that encourage distinct pornography. This paper also considers possible cultural implications of a distinct national pornography, the role of the government in controlling pornographic content through extra-legal means, and the implications of that control.     

Well-Being’s Relation to Religiosity and Spirituality in Children and Adolescents in Zambia

The relations among dimensions of subjective well-being (i.e., happiness and life satisfaction), spirituality and religiousness were assessed in children (aged 7–12, n = 391) and adolescents (aged 13–19, n = 902) in Zambia. These participants were sampled from schools in both urban and rural regions that represented a relatively wide range of affluence. Participants self-reported their happiness using the Faces Scale and the Subjective Happiness Scale, and their life satisfaction using the Student Life Satisfaction Scale. The surveys were available in English as well as two local languages, and were delivered in classroom settings. To assess religiosity, participants were asked about the frequency that they attended church and about the importance of religion in their life. To assess spirituality, participants were asked about whether they considered themselves to be a spiritual person and about the nature domain of spirituality (e.g., “I feel connected to nature”). Results indicated that age, gender, grade and religiosity were not strong predictors of children’s well-being. However, spirituality accounted for 21 % of the variance in life satisfaction beyond these demographic variables and religiosity, but did not account for additional variance in happiness. The results were similar for adolescents except that the demographic variables were weakly predictive of their life satisfaction, and religiosity was a modest predictor of their happiness. Spirituality predicted variance in happiness and life satisfaction more so among adolescents than among children. These results confirm earlier work showing that spirituality, but not necessarily religiosity, is associated with children’s and adolescents’ well-being.     

Nostalgia motivates pursuit of important goals by increasing meaning in life

This research focused on existential and motivational implications of the emotion of nostalgia. Nostalgia (relative to control) increased meaning in life, which, in turn, galvanised intentions to pursue one's most important goal (Experiment 1) and to pursue one's most important, but not least important, goal (Experiment 2). The basic pattern held in two cultures (British and Danish) independently of positive affect. This is the first evidence that nostalgia has specific motivational consequences (i.e., pursuit of more, but not less, important goals) and transmits these consequences via meaning in life. Also, this is the first evidence that meaning is associated with specific motivational consequences. Discussion considers the relevance of the findings for the emotion and motivation literatures.     

Exploring identities between the religious and the secular through the attendees of an ostensibly ‘Atheist Church’

The Sunday Assembly has a complex relationship with atheism and religion. It holds events which look and feel like religious worship, but uses this format to create a ‘godless congregation’. Described as an ‘atheist church’ by the media, members prefer to talk about inclusive communities. If the Sunday Assembly simultaneously embraces and rejects both atheism and religion, then how do attendees identify and describe themselves? We add to the growing literature exploring identities between the religious and the secular, presenting a qualitative study based on interviews with Sunday Assembly attendees. We interrogate three concepts: non-religion, the secular sacred and indifferentism to examine how the identity of Sunday Assembly attendees can be better understood. Our findings show that a significant number of attendees publicly identify as indifferent towards religion, while privately maintaining a more strongly non-religious identity, thus suggesting that for Sunday Assembly attendees, inclusivity is imperative.     

Nostalgia and Satisfaction with Life: A Behavioral Genetic Analysis

Journal of Happiness Studies - Nostalgia, a bittersweet but predominantly positive emotion, arises from self-relevant and social memories. Evidence suggests that nostalgia is a potential source of...