Invisible Mothers: A Content Analysis of Motherhood Ideologies and Myths in Magazines

The purpose of this study is to identify prevalent motherhood ideologies and myths in contemporary women's magazines. The results indicate that contemporary magazines promote a traditional motherhood ideology, yet perpetuate motherhood myths that undermine mothers who stay home. Traditional motherhood, which excludes Women of Color and employed mothers, is promoted. Mothers are almost exclusively presented in the domestic, rather than the public or integrated domestic–public, contexts. Myths that employed mothers are busy, tired, and guilty, and that employed mothers neglect and are unattached to their children, are not upheld. However, negative myths that at-home mothers are confused, overwhelmed, and interested only in superficial topics are upheld in the magazines analyzed. The implications of these results on the perpetuation of patriarchy are discussed.     

On the Rag on Screen: Menarche in Film and Television

The purpose of this essay is to examine film and television representations of menarche from a critical, feminist perspective. A close analysis of scenes about menarche in 3 films and 4 television programs reveals implicit ideological messages of gender difference and gender stereotypes. Although these scenes appear to be positive and powerful challenges to menstrual communication taboos, they ultimately serve to reinforce media stereotypes of gender difference.     

Authoritarianism without Dominant Ideology: Political Manifestations of Authoritarian Attitudes in Hungary

Since the publication of Adorno, Frenkel‐Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's (1950 ) classic study, considerable debate has developed concerning the political and ideological correlates of authoritarianism. This paper examines relationships between authoritarianism, on the one hand, and self‐identification with ideological labels, attitudes toward political extremists, and party preferences, on the other hand. The survey data have been collected in Hungary between 1994 and 2002. Findings indicate that it is the center‐right ideology and political orientation that attracts most authoritarians, yet authoritarian extreme‐left also survives. The findings also show that liberal orientation and center‐left identification constitute the political counter‐pole of authoritarianism. Extreme‐right supporters are found to be attracted only to particular aspects of authoritarianism.     

History of the unconscious in Soviet Russia: from its origins to the fall of the Soviet Union

Russia accepted the notion of the unconscious and psychoanalysis before many Western countries. The first Russian Psychoanalytic Society was established in 1911. After World War I and the Russian Revolution, for a short happy period, the following psychoanalysts were active: Sabina Spielrein, Tatiana Rosenthal, Moshe Wulff, Nikolai Osipov and Ivan Ermakov. Scholars associated with Soviet ideas participated too, including Aleksandr Luria, Michail Rejsner and Pavel Blonskij. Lev Vygotskij himself dealt with the unconscious. A second psychoanalytical society was set up in Kazan. Unfortunately, at the end of the 1920s, repression dissolved the psychoanalytic movement. Even the word 'psychoanalysis' was banned for decades. Nonetheless, interest in the unconscious, as distinct from psychoanalytic theory, survived in the work of the Georgian leader D. Uznadze. His followers organized the 1979 International Symposium on the Unconscious, in Tbilisi, Georgia, which marked the breaking of an ideological barrier. Since then, many medical, psychological, philosophical and sociological scholars have taken an interest in the unconscious, a subject both feared, for its ideological implications, and desired.Since the 1980s, psychoanalytic ideas have been published in the scientific press and have spread in society. The fall of the USSR in 1991 liberalized the scientific and institutional development of psychoanalysis.     

Immigration and femininity in Southern Europe: A gender‐based psychosocial analysis

Despite the growing presence of female immigrants in Western countries, research on the subject highlights two important biases that hinder appropriate explanation of the migratory phenomenon and hence prevent adequate intervention. First, most of the research studies conducted so far focus on male migration; second, the macro‐social perspective has prevailed in these areas of study since socio‐economic and political aspects have taken centre stage in analyses on migratory phenomena, From a gender‐based psychosocial perspective, this study addresses the migration project of 53 women from different South American countries, the Maghreb region and Eastern Europe now living in Southern Spain. For this purpose we conducted 23 in‐depth interviews, and staged six discussion groups with the aim of elucidating to what extent gender‐based psychosocial beliefs—stereotypes, ideology and identity—determine women's migration process. Our results suggest that the main stages in the process—deciding to emigrate, itinerary for social and labour integration in the host country, and general assessment of the migration experience—are strongly influenced by psychosociological constructs which arise as a result of female gender‐typing or female profile. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When and how social movements mobilize action within and across nations to promote solidarity with refugees

When and how do social movements form to mobilize action across national boundaries? In the context of the 2015 movement to support Syrian refugees, we develop an integrative model of transnational social movement formation shaped by pre-existing world-views (social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism) and social media exposure to iconic events, resulting in an emergent group consciousness (“we are”, “we believe”, “we feel”). Group consciousness is, in turn, the proximal predictor of solidarity with refugees. Participants were from six countries: Hungary (N = 267), Romania (N = 163), Germany (N = 190), the United Kingdom (N = 159), the United States (N = 244) and Australia (N = 344). Multi-group structural equation models confirmed that group consciousness, shaped by individual differences and exposure to events through social media, was the proximal predictor of solidarity. The subjective meaning of group consciousness varied across samples, reflecting national differences. Results support the importance of considering individual and national differences, and group processes in understanding emergent social movements.     

Political ideology predicts attitudes toward moral transgressors

We combine recent theoretical advances in the study of morality with a growing interest in the predictive power of political ideology to test new hypotheses concerning impression formation. In two experiments (total N = 3881), newly-formed attitudes depended upon United States citizens’ political ideology and the moral content of the attitude induction. Specifically, when forming impressions of a person violating moral foundations of Care/Fairness, political liberals disliked the person more than did conservatives. In contrast, when forming impressions of a person violating moral foundations of Loyalty/Authority/Purity, conservatives disliked the person more than did liberals. This work establishes that ideological differences are important not only for long-standing attitudes and judgments, but create attitudinal divides at the earliest stages of evaluation.     

A comparison of various authoritarianism scales in Belgian Flanders

The present study compared in a Flemish adult sample (N = 480) four recently developed authoritarianism scales as well as the widely used Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. Results revealed that all these measures were strongly related and that they showed relationships of comparable magnitude with various indicators of right‐wing ideology such as conservatism and racism, as well as with political party preferences. Analyses confirmed the superior fit of a multidimensional model for the scales that are assumed to have an explicit underlying multidimensional structure, but it was also revealed that there was little consensus on what these dimensions exactly mean. Finally, the results indicated serious problems of overlap between cultural conservatism and authoritarianism for some of the scales. Having relied exclusively on an empirical method for comparing the utility of these scales, the use of other criteria for a final assessment of the authoritarianism scales is elaborated upon. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Working for the Hierarchical System: The Role of Meritocratic Ideology in the Endorsement of Corruption

Corruption has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies, but it is widespread throughout the world. There is a question, however, as to whether corruption is endorsed as an outcome of a legitimate hierarchy and meritocracy. To address this issue, the present study examines the associations between meritocratic ideology and the indicators of corruption by performing two empirical studies with correlational and experimental designs. In Study 1, all variables were measured with scales, and the results demonstrated that meritocratic ideologies were negatively associated with corruption perception but positively associated with corrupt intention. In Study 2, meritocratic ideology was manipulated, and the results demonstrated that compared with the low meritocratic‐ideology condition, the participants primed by the high meritocratic‐ideology condition reported a lower corruption perception but higher corrupt intention. In both studies, the findings suggest that the meritocratic ideology that motivates people to maintain and bolster the current hierarchical structure and meritocracy leads to the endorsement of corruption. The present study explores the roles of meritocratic ideology in the perception and intention of corruption, extends the scope of the predictive power of system justification theory to corruption beyond mere injustice‐related aspects of disadvantage, and also provides suggestions for interpreting and fighting against corruption.     

Extreme‐Right Voting in Western Europe: The Role of Social‐Cultural and Antiegalitarian Attitudes

The joint impact of antiegalitarian attitudes and social‐cultural attitudes on citizens’ tendency to vote for extreme right‐wing political parties was investigated. In the first study, we explored these attitudes in representative samples of seven Western European countries. In a follow‐up study, we predicted respondents’ likelihood of voting for a Dutch right‐wing party on the basis of the measures of social‐dominance orientation (as an indicator of antiegalitarian attitudes) and right‐wing authoritarianism (as an indicator of social‐cultural attitudes). Our findings demonstrated that voting for extreme right‐wing parties was associated more consistently with antiegalitarian attitudes than with social‐cultural attitudes. Moreover, the effect of antiegalitarian attitudes was partly mediated by migration attitudes (Study 1) and ethnic prejudice (Study 2). We discuss the finding that antiegalitarian attitudes are more strongly related to extreme right‐wing voting than social‐cultural attitudes.