Characteristics of Danish Centenarians’ Religious Beliefs: A Nationwide Population-Based Study

Journal of Religion and Health - Research has shown that in groups of increasing age, religiousness becomes more prevalent. However, centenarians have only to a very limited extent been included in...     

Learning Facts About Migration: Politically Motivated Learning of Polarizing Information About Refugees

Information processing during heated debates on asylum and immigration may often be influenced by prejudice rather than a desire to learn facts. In this article, we investigate how people process empirical evidence on the consequences of refugee arrivals through a novel survey experiment that disentangles politically motivated learning from other forms of learning and expressive responding. Specifically, we ask respondents to interpret a 2×2 table about the relationship between asylum seekers and crime rates. Crucially, respondents are randomly allocated to evaluate a conclusion that triggers their identity-protective stakes or not. In addition, we test for motivated responding as an alternative explanation by randomly providing some respondents with a response format that motivates them to report their inference truthfully. We find that information processing changes substantially when new information challenges existing asylum attitudes. Politically motivated learning is strongest among voters with strong negative prior attitudes towards asylum seekers. Our results also indicate that expressive responding can only partially account for this gap in correctly reported inferences. Our research has important implications for research on the consequences of refugee migration, theories of motivated reasoning, and survey methodology.     

Patriotism,Orthodox religion and education: empirical findings from contemporary Russia

In recent years, an objective of some Russian Orthodox activists and Church leaders has been the introduction of religious education in state schools which was established in Russia in 2012, following a 2009 Presidential Directive. Today, however, there are two different strands in religious education. On the one hand, there is the state’s emphasis on the bonds between Orthodox Christianity and Russian history, culture and identity. Based on this so-called culturological understanding of religion, the Russian state hopes to use Orthodoxy in nation- and institution-building and in the strengthening of patriotism. On the other hand, while the culturological language is also used in the Church’s official discourse, in practice there are many attempts by Orthodox clergymen and activists to use religious education for the purposes of evangelisation.     

The Undepleted Ego: Self-Regulatory Adaptation in Multiple Task Sequences

Working on a task that requires strong self-regulation can deteriorate performance in a subsequent task also involving high self-regulatory demands. Several studies suggest that the consumption of limited self-regulatory resources may account for this effect known as ego depletion. We investigated the influence of expectations about upcoming tasks on self-regulatory performance in two experiments, contrasting tasks with high and low self-regulatory demand. We manipulated expectations by informing participants about the number of tasks to be worked on (Experiment 1) and by varying the number of tasks (Experiment 2). With the expectation of highly demanding tasks no ego-depletion effect occurred. Results show that expecting a continuation of high self-regulatory demand in a sequence of several tasks actually improved performance.     

The effect of sleep deprivation on signal detection parameters

Twelve subjects performed a high signal rate vigilance task, once after a night's sleep, and once after a night without sleep. Raw scores were transformed into the signal detection parameters, d' and β. After sleep deprivation, detection performance was significantly impaired. This was reflected in a fall of d', whereas β was not significantly altered. Analysing the control data alone for comparison with other vigilance studies revealed a decrement in % signals detected and d', and an increase in β from the first to the second half of the test.