God and Country: The Partisan Psychology of the Presidency,Religion, and Nation

Overt love of God and country have seemingly been prerequisites to be president in the United States in recent decades, if not always. Indeed, the 2008 presidential race was replete with campaign messages showcasing such perspectives—that Barack Obama and John McCain were religiously faithful and deeply patriotic. Scholarship demonstrates the potential political power of explicit appeals to America and Christianity; however, little research has examined (a) citizens' perceptions of candidates' ties to faith and nation and (b) how these impressions may be related to electoral attitudes and intended vote. We address this gap, measuring both explicit and implicit indicators of the Christian‐ness and American‐ness of Obama and McCain. We expected and found that both explicit and—in a final‐entry regression position—implicit perceptions of these traits related to voters' overall candidate attitudes and intended vote choice and that they were connected significantly more strongly for our sample of self‐described Republicans than Democrats. Results illuminate these partisan differences and raise questions about their implications for U.S. presidential politics in years to come.     

Sex differences in the relation between math performance, spatial skills, and attitudes

Sex differences have been previously found in cognitive and affective predictors of math achievement, including spatial skills and math attitudes. It is important to determine whether there are sex differences not only in the predictors themselves, but also in the nature of their relation to math achievement. The present paper examined spatial skills and math attitudes as predictors of curriculum-based measures of math performance in middle-school students, specifically comparing the patterns of these predictive relations for boys and girls. The results of the current study showed that, despite similar levels of math performance for boys and girls, the significance of particular predictors varied as a function of sex. Specifically, spatial skills predicted math performance in boys, but not in girls. We suggest that sex differences in spatial reasoning in conjunction with the differential involvement of spatial reasoning in math problem solving may lead to later sex differences in math outcomes.     

Polish students’ attitudes towards sexuality

The following article contains an analysis of medicine and pedagogy students’ attitudes towards sexuality. These attitudes were studied with the use of a scale of author’s own construction. The scale was used to determine: (1) the nature of respondents’ attitudes towards individual aspects of sexuality including several criteria: quality of life, health, acceptability, and morality; and (2) respondents’ preferences of normative regulations of sexual behaviours. It was found that the respondents accept love as relatively the most important aspect for the quality of life, and sex education (seen as a moral aspect). Students also give positive scores to physical aspects of sexuality, yet the scores are lower. Natural contraception in all its aspects is evaluated positively, whereas artificial contraception is evaluated ambiguously, similarly to masturbation and homosexuality. The fundamental norm in regulating sexual behaviour is the welfare of other human beings, the least important are the teachings of the Church.     

Describing citation structures in sport burnout literature: A citation network analysis

ObjectivesTo evaluate sport burnout research using citation network analysis.DesignA citation network analysis.MethodsWe began by searching the term “sport and burnout” in SportDiscus, Physical Education Index, and PsycINFO. From the returned search, we then selected and analyzed all peer-reviewed English articles that were published before 2012. This allowed us to create a network of inter-citations.ResultsOur search yielded 102 articles, of which there were 11 reviews (11%), 13 qualitative articles (13%), 76 quantitative articles (75%), and two mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) articles (2%). The 11 most cited articles were published between 1984 and 2006, appearing in 5 journals (7 of them in the same journal). Merely 2 of the most cited articles investigated coach burnout. Top-cited articles typically conducted original research using male and female individual sport athletes and were published by North American authors, with two recent exceptions. The most cited article, and also most influential burnout model, was Smith's (1986) cognitive-affective stress model.ConclusionsThe findings show that following an initial focus on coach burnout, more recent studies examine athletes. In this paper we have identified some strengths amongst the most cited papers, including a wide range of publication dates and a focus on both male and female athletes; however, there were also limitations such as a scarcity of articles investigating team sport athletes.     

The gap between athletes’ and parents’ perceptions of parental practices: The role of gender

ObjectivesThe present study explored the differences between athletes’ and parents’ perceptions of parental practices (i.e., active involvement, directive, pressure, praise, and understanding behaviours implemented by parents in the context of their child’s sport) by considering athletes’ and parents’ gender.Designcross-sectional study.MethodParents (N = 352) and athletes (N = 256, M = 14.72 years) completed a questionnaire to measure their perceptions of parental practices in sport. Zero-order correlations were computed for the entire sample and each sub-group (i.e., father-daughter, father-son, mother-daughter, and mother-son). One-level multilevel model (level 1: respondent) was computed to measure the influence of the respondent on the perceptions of parental practices. Two-level multilevel model (level 1: respondent, level 2: dyad) estimated the impact of the athletes’ gender, parents’ gender, and their interaction on the differences in perceptions.ResultsCorrelations highlighted relatively modest concordance between perceptions of parents and adolescents. Multilevel models showed that compared to athletes, parents reported significantly less frequent use for directive behaviours (β = −0.29) and more frequent use for active involvement (β = −0.18) and praise and understanding (β = 0.27). Correlations and multilevel models showed that the differences between athletes’ and parents’ perceptions of parental practices differed according to gender. The differences in perceptions of the directive behaviours (β = −0.22) and active involvement (β = 0.22) were higher when the father was involved in the dyad compared to the mother.     

The Oneness Beliefs Scale: Connecting Spirituality with Pro‐Environmental Behavior

The inherent unity of all phenomena, or oneness, is a central concept of mysticism, but there have heretofore been no measures of oneness beliefs. We developed the Oneness Beliefs Scale, with spiritual and physical oneness subscales. The spiritual oneness subscale fills a need in the field for a short, reliable measure of spirituality not characterized by the language of traditional Western religiousness. The physical oneness subscale allows researchers to juxtapose spiritual beliefs with a nonspiritual, materialist counterpart. We found that spiritual oneness beliefs were more strongly related to mystic experiences and spirituality than to traditional religiousness. Physical oneness was not strongly associated with either religiousness or spirituality. Both spiritual and physical oneness were positively associated with pro‐environmental attitudes but not with depression, anxiety, or negative affect. Spiritual oneness was a better predictor of pro‐environmental attitudes than was religiousness. Spiritual oneness also predicted donating to a pro‐environmental group, making this to our knowledge the first empirical study to show a positive association between a religion or spirituality measure and observed, rather than self‐reported, pro‐environmental behavior.     

Malleability of weight-biased attitudes and beliefs: A meta-analysis of weight bias reduction interventions

Weight bias exists across many important life domains, necessitating interventions designed to reduce weight-biased attitudes and beliefs. Though the effectiveness of weight bias interventions has been questioned, to our knowledge no meta-analysis of these interventions has been conducted. This meta-analysis evaluated the impact of weight bias interventions on weight-biased attitudes and beliefs and explored potential moderators. Interventions were eligible if they used an adult sample and a validated measure of weight-biased attitudes, which resulted in the inclusion of 30 studies represented in 29 articles. A random effects approach using inverse weights resulted in a mean effect size estimate of g = −0.33 (lower scores indicate less weight bias) for both attitudes and beliefs. Intervention type, publication type, and population type were not significant moderators but demonstrated noteworthy trends. Results reveal a small, positive effect of weight bias interventions on weight-biased attitudes and beliefs and provide useful information for future interventions.     

The ironic impact of intergroup apologies on intergroup attitudes: Understanding the role of perceived power for post‐apology outgroup attitudes

The present research investigates how intergroup apologies, defined as apologies between two groups, affect perceived remorse and outgroup attitudes (e.g., explicit and implicit), in the context of power asymmetries. We recruited participants from two countries that differ in perceived power: South Korea and the United States. Participants read a vignette describing a violent act committed by an outgroup member (Korean or American), with or without an intergroup apology. Participants answered questions assessing perceived remorse and explicit attitudes toward the outgroup, followed by the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Results revealed that Koreans perceived less remorse following an intergroup apology from the United States, compared to when they did not read an intergroup apology. Further, a mediated moderation analysis indicated that perceived remorse mediated the relationship between apology and explicit attitudes towards the United States. However, an analogous effect for implicit attitudes was only marginally significant. In contrast, among American participants, no effect of the apology on perceived remorse, explicit attitudes, or implicit attitudes and no evidence for a mediation was found. We discuss the implications of these effects on understanding the effectiveness of intergroup apologies between countries that differ in perceived power.     

Gender role attitudes,relationship efficacy,and self-disclosure in intimate relationships

Drawing from the intimacy process model and data from 5,042 individuals who remained partnered across Waves 1 and 2 of the German Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam), this study examined the contributions of traditional gender role attitudes and relationship efficacy in predicting levels of self-disclosure within an intimate relationship. Independent samples t-tests demonstrated females scored higher than males on self-disclosure and relationship efficacy measures but lower on traditional gender role attitudes. An ordinary least squares regression analysis revealed relationship efficacy was a stronger predictor of self-disclosure compared to traditional gender role attitudes, which were not associated with self-disclosure. The findings suggest attitudes with an interpersonal motivational system may be especially important for setting the intimacy process into motion within an intimate union.