Looking back and falling further behind: The moderating role of rumination on the relationship between organizational politics and employee attitudes,well-being,and performance

The current study tested the theoretically relevant, yet previously unexamined, role of rumination on the relationship between politics perceptions and a variety of threat responses. Drawing from Response Styles Theory, it was argued that rumination amplifies the effects of politics by enhancing the influence of negative information on cognition, interfering with problem-solving, and undermining sources of social support. The work stress literature, along with extant politics research, served to identify four variables – job satisfaction, tension, depressed work mood, and employee effort/performance – that served as study outcomes. Across three unique samples, hypothesized relationships were strongly supported, indicating that politics perceptions negatively affected work outcomes of high ruminators, but demonstrate little influence on those who engage in less rumination. Moreover, the nonlinear influences of the focal constructs were considered and the results confirmed atypical relational forms. Contributions, implications for theory and practice, strengths and limitations, and future research directions are described.     

Religion at the European Parliament: the Italian case

Italy is a predominantly Catholic country that developed historically on the basis of a strong, dominant religion and weak state institutions. Yet, openly clerical parties, direct advocates of the interests of the Catholic Church, have nowadays virtually disappeared and the relevance of the religious cleavage is decreasing, in favour of a more indirect support for these interests, mainly among moderate and conservative forces. Although the overall level of secularisation in Italy has increased, the degree of religiosity of Italian society remains one of the highest of the 27 member-states of the European Union (EU) and polarisation over religious issues in domestic politics remains high, particularly regarding moral values and family matters. In our study we explore the role of religion within the Italian political sphere with regard to the functioning of political representation, by taking into account the sub-national, national and European levels of government. We focus on the attitudes and behaviours of Italian political elites at the EU level. We hypothesise a strong influence of religion on the articulation between national and European politics. Our findings consistently show that the degree of religiosity of the Italian delegation to the European Parliament (EP) is high. However, the impact of such a high degree of religiosity among the members of the EP (MEPs) on their political activities appears less direct than one might predict, while the degree of political secularism is higher among Italian MEPs than among their national or regional counterparts. When we discuss a case study, namely the accession of Turkey to the EU, our data show that the religious attitudes of Italian MEPs play a crucial role in their stance on Turkish accession. The picture that emerges is thus nuanced. Religion significantly impacts on Italian MEPs’ ideological, political and moral attitudes, but plays a smaller role in their activities; while their left-right collocation emerges as the most relevant predictor, despite a number of exceptions.     

Changing Identities to Change the World: Identity Motives in Lifestyle Politics and Its Link to Collective Action

In this article, we assume an interdisciplinary approach to the study of why and how people transpose political considerations to their lifestyles. Our aims are threefold: to understand the meanings and perceptions of people engaged in lifestyle politics and collective action; to examine the motives guiding individual change; and to explore the linkage processes between lifestyle politics and collective action. Identity process theory is considered as a lens to examine the processes and the motives of identity via a thematic analysis of 22 interviews. This study combined interviews with people seeking social change through their lifestyles with interviews with members of action groups and social movements. We found that each participant's identity is guided by identity motives such as distinctiveness, continuity, and psychological coherence. Besides, lifestyle politics is evaluated as an effective way to bring about social change, depending on the individual experience of perceived power to bring about change through collective action. Overall, lifestyle politics states the way in which the participants decided to live, to construct their identities, and to represent their beliefs about the right thing to do. Lifestyle politics complements collective action as a strategy to increase the potential of bringing about social change. The implications of this research are discussed in relation to the importance of understanding the processes of identity and lifestyle change in the context of social, environmental, and political change.     

“Je suis en terrasse”: Political Violence,Civilizational Politics,and the Everyday Courage to Be

Following the attacks against the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the subsequent acts of political violence in Paris the following November, a number of memes spread swiftly across social media. Most notable of these were proclamations of “Je suis Charlie,” “Je suis Paris,” “Je suis en terrasse,” and tricolorizing one's Facebook profile page. Although there are various ways by which this phenomenon might be explained, this article argues that, at least for some people, they seem to have operated as key mechanisms by which individuals/society sought to reestablish what Tillich calls “the courage to be,” and which in more contemporary terminology might be labeled a sense of ontological security—the ability to go on in the face of what would otherwise be debilitating anxieties of existential dread. The article argues the memes did this through a number of mechanisms. These included establishing a sense of vicarious identification with the victims; embracing increased levels of danger and seeking to confront the question of mortality head on; reasserting a sense of community and home via the reinstantiation of everyday routines now ascribed with enhanced political and existential significance; and reaffirming a new civilizationally inflected self‐narrative.     

President's Award for Significant Contributions to Psychology

The contributions upon which this award was based were made primarily in two domains, one local and the other international. The former had two aspects, one comprised research and teaching, and the other, through being Treasurer and then President of the Australian Psychological Society, was directed at building a strong and viable Society, financially, collegiately, and professionally. The second domain of involvement resulted in holding the posts of Secretary General and then President of the International Association of Applied Psychology in which, among other things, an underlying interest was in strengthening and deepening the participation of Australian psychologists in the activities of the Association. Due progressively to the efforts of many this has led to a range of major outcomes including an increasing membership of Australian psychologists in both the Association and its Board of Directors, their increasing participation in the Association's congresses, and in the Society being granted the right for the first time to host an International Congress of Applied Psychology (the 2010 ICAP in Melbourne). Collectively the benefits for Australian psychology have been many. These include raising the profile of Australian psychology internationally, giving Australia a voice in the governance of international psychology, and working towards Australian psychology contributing to mainstream psychological theory and practice. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the discipline of psychology is that it is both scientifically and professionally oriented, and while the balance between the two may vary from one organisation to another their interdependence is a necessity. Because all national societies and international associations of psychology are children of the discipline the affinity is natural, yet while this may be so the connection needs to be actively maintained to prevent it withering, to the detriment of both. Thus, in keeping with tradition, while this article will outline the major contributions upon which the award was made, its primary focus is the nature and imperative of the relationship between science and professional practice, and this will be a recurring theme in each of the following principal sections dealing with research and teaching, the Australian Psychological Society (APS), the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), the 2010 International Congress of Applied Psychology (ICAP), and mainstream psychology.     

Fifty years of American polarization and the changing roles of faith communities

The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president and the first year of his administration have been accompanied by intensified social and political divides in the United States. A comparison of today's polarization with that during the Vietnam War and civil rights movement of the 1960s suggests strategies for bridging the divides—and in particular for an expanding role by faith communities.     

Transdisciplinary Conversations in Child and Youth Care

Beginning from the proposition that doing transdisciplinary child and youth care (CYC) entails an ethic of risk and vulnerability, four graduate students from differing social, spiritual, bodied, and academic locations trace how our research and professional projects encounter, challenge, support, and disrupt one another. Thinking through two concepts critical to the field of CYC in Canada (politics and care), we aim to (a) make visible the possibilities, tensions, and incommensurabilities that emerge when we collectively risk generous, rigorous dialogue between distinct research projects, practice orientations, and lived ontological and epistemological loyalties; and (b) imagine the practices required to enact, and the creative collaborations that might emerge through, transdisciplinary conversations in child and youth care.     

Lifeboat politics in the Pacific: Affect and the ripples and shimmers of a migrant saturated future

Affect is explored in relation to the governance of irregular migrants and asylum seekers that turn such vulnerable individuals into a feared category. How are emotions as practices developed, fostered and enacted? The examples developed in the article focus on ‘illegal maritime arrivals’ (asylum seekers arriving by boat) and the emotionally charged response to them in Australia. The article argues that the state, far from embodying a detached and neutral arbiter utilising various steering mechanisms of care and due process, instead governs through fear and anxiety generated in relation to outsiders. The state draws on, and indeed creates, dispositions and feelings, generating a distinct politics of affect. The motif of the lifeboat is an example of a diversion from the anxieties and fears in everyday life; a metaphor for scarcity and a battle for survival. The asylum seeker as ‘illegal maritime arrival’ (boat person) is the exemplar of such a lifeboat politics in the Australian case.     

Not all semantics: Similarities and differences in reminiscing function and content between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians

This study explored why and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remember the past. Indigenous Australians traditionally share a strong oral tradition in which customs, personal and cultural histories, and other narratives are passed across groups and between generations by word of mouth. Drawing on this tradition, in which inherent value is placed on sharing knowledge and maintaining connectedness with others, we hypothesised that Indigenous Australians would be more likely than non-Indigenous Australians to report reminiscing to fulfil social functions (but not self or directive functions). Furthermore, we hypothesised that Indigenous Australians would recall personal past experiences more elaborately than would non-Indigenous Australians. In Study 1, 33 Indigenous Australians and 76 non-Indigenous Australians completed Webster's Reminiscence Functions Scale. As predicted, Indigenous participants reported higher scores on subscales related to social functions than did non-Indigenous Australians: particularly “Teach/Inform” and “Intimacy Maintenance”. They also scored higher on the “Identity” subscale. In Study 2, 15 Indigenous and 14 non-Indigenous Australians shared three memories from the distant and recent past. While Indigenous and non-Indigenous narratives did not differ in either emotion or elaboration, Indigenous Australians provided more memory context and detail by including a greater proportion of semantic memory content. Taken together, these findings suggest differences in both why and how Australians remember.