Zero‐sum thinking as mediator of the relationship of national attitudes with (un)willingness to host refugees in own country

This study examines factors related to willingness to host refugees. We examined the role of national attitudes (patriotism, nationalism), out‐group attitudes (classic and modern prejudice), and zero‐sum thinking: Belief in a Zero‐Sum Game and psychological entitlement in attitudes towards hosting refugees. We proposed including zero‐sum thinking as possible mediator between national attitudes and attitudes towards refugees based on assumption that nationalism is a competitive attitude towards out‐groups, while patriotism does not. Structural equation modelling based on a Polish national sample (N = 1092) revealed that patriotism is positively associated with willingness to host refugees, through its negative association with prejudice via decreasing zero‐sum thinking. Nationalism was negatively associated with willingness to host refugees, through prejudice via increasing zero‐sum thinking. Findings are discussed in the context of current refugee policies.     

Mediators of the associations between parents’ conditional regard and the quality of their adult-children’s peer-relationships

Motivation and Emotion - Parental conditional regard (PCR) involves parents providing or withdrawing affection to motivate children to do what the parents want. Numerous studies have demonstrated...     

Let's Dialogue About Penny: Effectiveness of Dialogue Involvement and Legitimizing Paltry Contribution Techniques1

Earlier research has shown (Cialdini & Schroeder, 1976) that the statement “Even a penny will help” added to a standard request for charity donation considerably increases the probability of carrying it out. The present study tested the effectiveness of this technique in various contexts in a set of 3 field experiments conducted on the streets of 2 Polish cities. The results proved, first, that success can be strengthened when combined with a dialogue in which a requester is involved prior to being asked for a donation. Second, it was shown that the dialogue itself produced more compliance than did a monologue. Third, it was demonstrated that dialogue related to the content of the requested issue may or may not result in an increase in compliance, presumably depending on the in‐group/out‐group focus of the dialogue's content. Practical implications for charity donation are offered.     

Three-valued Logic,Indeterminacy and Quantum Mechanics

The paper consists of two parts. The first part begins with the problem of whether the original three-valued calculus, invented by J. ukasiewicz, really conforms to his philosophical and semantic intuitions. I claim that one of the basic semantic assumptions underlying ukasiewicz's three-valued logic should be that if under any possible circumstances a sentence of the form X will be the case at time t is true (resp. false) at time t, then this sentence must be already true (resp. false) at present. However, it is easy to see that this principle is violated in ukasiewicz's original calculus (as the cases of the law of excluded middle and the law of contradiction show). Nevertheless it is possible to construct (either with the help of the notion of supervaluation, or purely algebraically) a different three-valued, semi-classical sentential calculus, which would properly incorporate ukasiewicz's initial intuitions. Algebraically, this calculus has the ordinary Boolean structure, and therefore it retains all classically valid formulas. Yet because possible valuations are no longer represented by ultrafilters, but by filters (not necessarily maximal), the new calculus displays certain non-classical metalogical features (like, for example, non-extensionality and the lack of the metalogical rule enabling one to derive p is true or q is true from pqq is true).The second part analyses whether the proposed calculus could be useful in formalizing inferences in situations, when for some reason (epistemological or ontological) our knowledge of certain facts is subject to limitation. Special attention should be paid to the possibility of employing this calculus to the case of quantum mechanics. I am going to compare it with standard non-Boolean quantum logic (in the Jauch–Piron approach), and to show that certain shortcomings of the latter can be avoided in the former. For example, I will argue that in order to properly account for quantum features of microphysics, we do not need to drop the law of distributivity. Also the idea of reading off the logical structure of propositions from the structure of Hilbert space leads to some conceptual troubles, which I am going to point out. The thesis of the paper is that all we need to speak about quantum reality can be acquired by dropping the principle of bivalence and extensionality, while accepting all classically valid formulas.     

On Nations And Children: Rousseau,Poland And European Identity

The paper is an interpretation of J.-J.Rousseaus book on the government of Poland. The central part of the paper is devoted to complex relations between the notions of nature, nation, childhood, and civic education. Methodologically, the analysis involves interpretation of historical contexts and positions significant in the writing of the book, and deconstruction of its key categories. In the latter respect, the idea of strangeness of Poland is the point of departure, and the role it plays in the construction of national and European identity is the aim of analysis.     

A cognitively-gated place? The role of need for closure in a biased perception of the place’s past

Biased memory of the past is often a starting point for intergroup conflicts. In three correlational studies, we examined the relationship between need for closure (NFC) and historical ethnocentric bias, a tendency to overestimate the role of one’s ethnic group in the multicultural history of the city of residence. In addition, we checked whether this relationship would be mediated by an individual preference for essentialist places. We found that higher NFC was related to increased historical ethnocentric bias. Moreover, this relation was mediated by preference for an essentialist type of a place. Our results may contribute to understanding the role of individual differences and preferred type of place in shaping a biased representation of the past. Furthermore, our research findings point to the importance of raising awareness of the multicultural past among high NFC individuals.

     

Religion and behavioral procrastination: Mediating effects of locus of control and content of prayer

Religion is a significant predictor of self-regulatory processes. Procrastination has been described as the very essence of self-regulatory failure. In this study, we examined the relationship between religiousness and procrastination, with locus of control and styles of prayer playing mediating roles. These relationships were tested using data from 196 students. We applied the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, Levenson’s Locus of Control Scale, the God Control Scale, the Content of Prayer Scale, and the Behavioral Procrastination Scale. The results showed that: God control fully mediates the effects of ideology and intellect on procrastination; internal control fully mediates the effect of public prayer and religious experience on procrastination; and passive style of prayer was a mediator in the relationship between centrality of religion and procrastination. Our findings suggest that religious people may give up internal control, believing that their matters are in God’s hands. Being subject to God’s power provides them with a replacement form of control, which reduces problems of self-regulation.

     

Valence of Affective Verbal Fluency: fMRI Studies on Neural Organization of Emotional Concepts <Emphasis Type="Italic">Joy</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Fear</Emphasis>

The present study was designed to examine the underlying brain mechanisms of positive and negative emotional verbal fluency. Three verbal fluency tasks (one non-emotional phonemic task, two emotional tasks: Joy and Fear) were used in this study. The results were analyzed for 35 healthy, Polish-speaking, right-handed adults aged 20–35. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (3T) was used to show brain activity during active participation in emotional verbal fluency tasks. The results reported for emotional fluency confirmed activation of different brain regions for the negative and positive emotional verbal fluency: in positive emotional verbal fluency Joy elicits greater activation in the frontal regions and the cingulate cortex, while in negative verbal fluency Fear is reflected in activation of parietal and temporal areas. The study provides an evidence for differentiation in neural mechanisms between positive and negative emotional verbal fluency and/or positive and negative retrieving processes, and differentiation in brain-related determinants of the emotional concepts organization.