Antecedents and consequences of autonomy- and dependency-oriented help toward refugees

We tested antecedents (paternalistic beliefs; Study 1) and consequences (social change potential; Study 2) of autonomy- and dependency-oriented help and developed scales assessing paternalistic beliefs and both forms of help. In Study 1 (N = 143 Germans), we focused on paternalistic beliefs as an antagonist to social change and a key distinguishing variable between engagement in both forms of help. As expected, paternalistic beliefs were positively related to dependency-oriented help, mediated by concern for a positive national moral image, but negatively related to autonomy-oriented help, mediated by perceived competence of refugees. In Study 2, both refugees (N = 80) and Germans (N = 94) perceived autonomy-oriented help to have more potential for social change than dependency-oriented help.     

Do people know how they’ve changed? A longitudinal investigation of volitional personality change and participants’ retrospective perceptions thereof

Prior research has found that most people want to change their personalities. Moreover, these change goals predict trait growth. The present study extended this by examining both actual change in self-report traits and people’s perceptions of how they have changed across 16 weeks. Results indicated moderate alignment between trait growth and perceived change (average r = 0.49)—with 39% of responses indicating perceived changes in the opposite direction of trait growth. Moreover, change goals predicted trait growth holding perceptions constant, and both trait growth and perceptions independently predicted well-being. These data elucidate how people perceive the process of volitional change. Moreover, these data suggest people change in desired ways, even if they do not perceive those changes.     

THE COLLAPSE OF OLIGARCHIC CAPITALISM AND THE RISE OF REGENERATIVE LEARNING: HOW THE SCIENCE OF ENERGY SYSTEMS CLARIFIES WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY AND WHAT COMES NEXT

We live in a head-spinning, gut-wrenching time of multiplying crises. At home we face outsourced jobs, crumbling cities, underpaid teachers, unaffordable healthcare, endless wars, political corruption, a co-opted corporate media, skyrocketing inequality, and public “austerity” measures whose main purpose is to make tax-breaks for the rich more affordable. Working-class stagnation is producing widespread anxiety, mounting debt, and “despair deaths” from opioid abuse. Fear is fueling populist outrage, along with extremism, authoritarianism, and the conditions for a fascist takeover. Meanwhile, climate change poses an existential threat to humanity itself. All of these calamities spring from the same root cause: an oligarchic capitalism that puts short-term profit for owners over people and planet. While this system seems immutable, upheavals from Occupy Wall Street to the rise of right-wing populism signal a backlash to a political–economic establishment that treats people and planet as resources to be pillaged and expenses to be minimized. Its failures have also been driving the development of new possibilities in the form of more systemic approaches. Still, while systems thinking has improved approaches in fields from agriculture to medicine, so far none of these reforms have been able to channel public frustration into true transformation because none addresses the root problem: oligarchy. The science of systemic vitality we need is also being born, but so far, its findings are diffuse. This article shows how the science of energy systems can galvanize today’s economic reformation by articulating the common sense rules and rigorous measures of systemic vitality, while anchoring them in an evidence-based vision of humanity as a collaborative learning species. The result is a practical path to building systemic socioeconomic vitality by revitalizing human networks, energizing collective learning, and clarifying why oligarchic capitalism is a distortion of our original democratic free-enterprise dream, which is now careening toward collapse.     

Favoriser le développement professionnel avec le feedback : les engagements affectif et calculé envers l’objectif comme modérateurs de la relation intention–comportement

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of affective and continuance goal commitment in the relationship between motivational intention to act on feedback and behavioural integration of feedback. In an individual psychological assessment context, 74 candidates who received feedback were recruited. Moderation analyses using hierarchical multiple regressions showed that affective and continuance goal commitments moderate the relationship between motivational intention to act on feedback and behavioural changes, three months later. This relationship is significant and positive only when the level of affective or continuance goal commitment is low. The relationship between motivational intention to change and engagement in developmental activities is not moderated by goal commitment.     

Two good reasons to say ‘change!’ – ensemble representations as well as item representations impact standard measures of VWM capacity

Visual working memory (VWM) is a central bottleneck in human information processing. Its capacity is most often measured in terms of how many individual‐item representations VWM can hold (k). In the standard task employed to estimate k, an array of highly discriminable colour patches is maintained and, after a short retention interval, compared to a test display (change detection). Recent research has shown that with more complex, structured displays, change‐detection performance is, in addition to individual‐item representations, supported by ensemble representations formed as a result of spatial subgroupings. Here, by asking participants to additionally localize the change, we reveal indication for an influence of ensemble representations even in the very simple, unstructured displays of the colour‐patch change‐detection task. Critically, pure‐item models from which standard formulae of k are derived do not consider ensemble representations and, therefore, potentially overestimate k. To gauge this overestimation, we develop an item‐plus‐ensemble model of change detection and change localization. Estimates of k from this new model are about 1 item (~30%) lower than the estimates from traditional pure‐item models, even if derived from the same data sets.     

“I Stand in the Middle of the Ocean”

The challenge of climate change for the South Pacific Island of Kiribati demands a 21st‐century missional vision to help respond effectively to the hopes and fears of islanders. This article employs a “coconut theology” embedded within an Indigenous knowledge thought‐system and the daily cultural experiences of the Kiribati people. Using coconut theology as a qualitative method, this study views climate songs as a source of primary data. The songs are collected and analyzed through a thematic approach. The findings demonstrate that songs play a critical role in the Kiribati people’s culture, keeping their voice alive and helping them make sense of their experiences of climate change. Based on the findings, the article argues that climate change songs embody critical theologies that could help the church embrace Indigenous imagination in its search for contextual relevance and effective response to climate change.     

Influencing Republicans’ and Democrats’ attitudes toward Obamacare: Effects of imagined vicarious cognitive dissonance on political attitudes

The field of experimental social psychology is appropriately interested in using novel theoretical approaches to implement change in the social world. In the current study, we extended cognitive dissonance theory by creating a new framework of social influence: imagined vicarious dissonance. We used the framework to influence attitudes on an important and controversial political attitude: U.S. citizens’ support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 36 Republicans and 84 Democrats were asked to imagine fellow Republicans and Democrats, respectively, making attitude discrepant statements under high and low choice conditions about support for the ACA. The data showed that vicarious dissonance, established by imagining a group member make a counterattitudinal speech under high-choice conditions (as compared to low-choice conditions), resulted in greater support for the Act by Republicans and marginally diminished support by Democrats. The results suggest a promising role for the application of vicarious dissonance theory to relevant societal issues and for further understanding the relationship of dissonance and people’s identification with their social groups.