Building an active citizenry: the role of neighborhood problems, readiness, and capacity for change

Community-building initiatives strive to involve residents as the drivers of the change process, involving them in an array of activities including collective action efforts. Recent evaluations of many of these initiatives, however, suggest that developing the levels of resident involvement needed in such efforts is challenging. This study examines the neighborhood conditions that are related to whether and how much residents become involved in individual activism and collective action efforts. A random-digit-dial phone survey of 460 residents in 7 distressed neighborhoods suggested that while demographic variables were relatively unimportant, resident perceptions of neighborhood readiness (i.e., hope for the future and collective efficacy) and capacity for change (i.e., social ties and neighborhood leadership), and the level of neighborhood problems were strongly related to whether and how much residents were involved in individual and collective action efforts. Moreover, different elements of these neighborhood conditions were more or less important depending on the type and level of resident involvement. For example, while perceptions of neighborhood problems was the strongest predictor of whether an individual became involved at all, perceived strength of neighborhood leadership was the strongest predictor of an individual's level of activity. The implications of these findings for practitioners and scientists are discussed.     

Religious Fundamentalism and Gender Differences

The role of religious fundamentalism and its relationship to shame and guilt was evaluated in 107 students who attend a church-sponsored university. A number of personality measures were given and gender differences were analyzed. The role of externalization was similar for males in this sample to that of earlier studies. However, it was found that females showed positive correlations between externalization and both shame and guilt. For females, more fundamentalistic religious training may help to contribute to an external orientation at the expense of identifying with a personal religion, and appropriate guilt.     

"八荣八耻"的道德哲学

“八荣八耻”的社会主义荣辱观,把社会主义道德的要求聚焦到荣辱观,集中点击人的良心,可谓四两拨千斤;“八荣八耻”督促人们作出善恶选择,启迪了个人的道德自觉、自主和自律,同时也强调了公民的道德权利和义务;“八荣八耻”的落实重在修养和践行,为社会主义道德建设与和谐社会的构建创造了精神条件。     

自我表现还是自我防卫？职场负面八卦对八卦目标行为策略的影响机制

基于社会认知自我调节理论,本研究探讨了职场负面八卦对八卦目标行为的影响机制。对214份员工和领导配对问卷的分析结果表明：羞愧在关于自身的职场负面八卦和印象管理、职场排斥之间起中介作用;关于同事的职场负面八卦对羞愧的中介效应起到调节作用,关于同事的职场负面八卦越弱,关于自身的职场负面八卦通过羞愧对印象管理及职场排斥的预测更加明显。     

社会排斥对青少年自伤的影响:羞耻感的中介和认知重评的调节

通过3个行为实验考察了社会排斥对青少年自伤的影响。实验1发现,社会排斥和自伤经历能明显增加青少年的自伤时长(假设1);实验2进一步验证假设1,并验证了羞耻感的中介作用(假设2);实验3验证了认知重评对羞耻感中介效应的调节作用(假设3)。结果表明,社会排斥通过诱发羞耻感影响青少年自伤,但采用认知重评的情绪管理策略能够有效阻断羞耻感的中介作用。本研究为青少年自伤的认知干预提供了有力的实证支持。     

Do shame and perfectionistic self-presentation explain the link between early affiliative memories and eating psychopathology?

This study tested a model examining the impact that early affiliative memories (both with family and peers) on eating psychopathology, and whether these links are carried by the mechanisms of external shame and body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation, in a sample of 480 female college students. Path analyses’ results revealed that this model accounted for 48% of disordered eating’s variance and suggests that the lack of early positive emotional memories is associated with higher levels of shame (feelings of inferiority and unattractiveness), and with higher tendency to adopt body image-related perfectionistic strategies, that seem to explain excessive eating concern and rigid control of one’s eating behaviors. This study offers important insights for future research and for the development of intervention programs, by revealing the importance of assessing and targeting shame and perfectionistic strategies and suggesting the importance of promoting adaptive emotion regulation strategies.     

德性自我意象、道德情绪与行为自我管理：对大学生的一项交叉滞后研究

研究采用交叉时序滞后设计,以问卷法对363名大学生进行了6个月的追踪调查,考察了德性自我意象、道德情绪（内疚/羞愧）与行为自我管理之间的相互预测关系。结果表明,德性自我意象、内疚和羞愧均能显著地正向预测道德行为自我管理,德性自我意象、内疚和羞愧可能是道德行为自我管理的前因变量。     

Interpreting conjoined noun phrases and conjoined clauses: Collective versus distributive preferences

Two experiments are reported that show that introducing event participants in a conjoined noun phrase (NP) favours a single event (collective) interpretation, while introducing them in separate clauses favours a separate events (distributive) interpretation. In Experiment 1, acceptability judgements were speeded when the bias of a predicate toward separate events versus a single event matched the presumed bias of how the subjects' referents were introduced (as conjoined noun phrases or in conjoined clauses). In Experiment 2, reading of a phrase containing an anaphor following conjoined noun phrases was facilitated when the anaphor was they, relative to when it was neither/each of them; the opposite pattern was found when the anaphor followed conjoined clauses. We argue that comprehension was facilitated when the form of an anaphor was appropriate for how its antecedents were introduced. These results address the very general problem of how we individuate entities and events when presented with a complex situation and show that different linguistic forms can guide how we construe a situation. The results also indicate that there is no general penalty for introducing the entities or events separately—in distinct clauses as “split” antecedents.     

20‐Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale: Do difficulties describing feelings assess proneness to shame instead of difficulties symbolizing emotions?

A hallmark of alexithymia is the difficulty putting emotional states into words which has to be differentiated from problems to communicate emotion to others. Shame proneness is a personality trait that is expected to be closely related to a reduced emotional self-disclosure in social interactions. The present investigation was conducted to examine construct validity of the Difficulties Describing Feelings scale of the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). The TAS-20 was administered to 68 subjects (30 psychiatric inpatients and 38 normals) along with the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), a direct measure of the ability to express feelings verbally, and the Shame-Guilt-Scale. Difficulties Describing Feelings was associated with shame assessing scales but not with guilt assessing scales or the LEAS. Thus, in view of our data one should be cautious in interpreting scores from the TAS-20 scale Difficulties Describing Feelings as indices of a difficulty to symbolize one's emotions. Instead, this TAS-20 scale seems to evaluate aspects of social shame.     

Poverty and experiences of social devaluation: a qualitative interview study of 25 long-standing recipients of social security payments

The purpose of this study is to explore experiences of social devaluation among people living in poverty. Twenty-five long-standing recipients of social security payments living in a city in Norway were interviewed. Most felt that people in their environment held low opinions of them regarding issues related to personality and moral integrity. Several factors play a role in the formation of such beliefs or assumptions: (a) impressions of prevailing views of the social category "the poor" and observations concerning devaluation of that category; (b) knowledge others are assumed to possess of the respondents' financial predicament; (c) perception of own social situation; (d) undesired behavior that signals low social status and low esteem; (e) actions by others that signal devaluation. Social devaluation is also experienced at the affective level: the sense of shame and guilt is widespread.