Aggression,anger and hostility: Evaluation of moral disengagement as a mediational process

This study examines how the mechanisms underlying moral disengagement serve as a mediator between anger and hostility and physical and verbal aggression. The study was carried out on 424 participants (61.1% females), aged 15 to 25 years, assessing the direct and indirect effects of the distinct variables using a hierarchical multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that anger and hostility contribute independently and positively to physical and verbal aggression. Moreover, the relationships between anger, hostility, and aggression appear to be mediated by moral disengagement. Indeed, this process of mediation was invariant across sexes, and it tended to be stronger for physical – as opposed to verbal – aggression.     

The phenomenology of protest atmosphere: A demonstrator perspective

This paper aims to improve our understanding of demonstrators' atmosphere perceptions, that is, demonstrators' affective state, which is induced by the protest environment. We examined how demonstrators perceive protest atmosphere, why they do so, and whether atmosphere perceptions influence demonstrators' future collective action preparedness. We hypothesized that demonstrators' atmosphere perceptions diverge on a dimension of pleasure, and relate to their grievance (i.e., perceived societal intolerance), group identification, empowerment, and perceived police aggression. A pleasant atmosphere perception was expected to stimulate a demonstrator's future action preparedness. We tested these hypotheses with a mixed‐methods dataset of two Dutch protests, staged by Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgenders and anti‐monarchists. Our analyses revealed that demonstrators' atmosphere perceptions diverge on a dimension of pleasure, and relate to group identification, empowerment, and, for anti‐monarchists, perceived societal intolerance. A pleasant atmosphere perception deters a demonstrator's future action preparedness and also stimulates his or her group identification and empowerment, which, then, stimulate his or her action preparedness. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting aggressive collective action based on the efficacy of peaceful and aggressive actions

We examine whether aggressive forms of collective action are predicted by their perceived efficacy and the perceived efficacy of peaceful collective action, and whether the two predictors interact. We present data from surveys examining support for and tendencies toward aggressive collective action among university students who are opposed to increases in tuition fees in Britain (Study 1) and support for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians among Palestinians during the Second Intifada (Study 2). Our results reveal an interaction between the efficacy of peaceful and aggressive collective actions: The more efficacious aggression is perceived to be, the greater its appeal and the less it is assuaged by the efficacy of peaceful action. This implies that (i) people may consider aggressive action whenever it works, even if peaceful action is efficacious, and (ii) people may consider aggressive action even when it seems unpromising, if peaceful action is not efficacious, in an apparent nothing‐to‐lose strategy.     

Social mirrors. Tove Jansson’s Invisible Child and the importance of being seen

This article examines the experience of being seen and analyzes its central role in the formation of a coherent sense of self. Tove Jansson’s short story from 1962, ‘The Invisible Child’, serves as the red thread of the article, and the story is analyzed in the light of Donald Winnicott’s work on social mirroring. The analysis is enriched by the psychoanalytic insights of Veikko Tähkä and Heinz Kohut, and complemented by Axel Honneth’s philosophical elaborations as well as by recent developmental findings as presented by Vasudevi Reddy. The article is divided into an introduction and three sections. After summarizing Jansson’s story in the introduction, the first section elaborates and examines different senses of social invisibility. The second section assesses developmental factors that promote social invisibility and highlights the importance of being seen. The third and final section interprets Jansson’s story as an analogy to an intensive therapeutic process, while pinpointing those elements that facilitate the restructuring of a disturbed sense of self. As a whole, the article thus discusses an issue that is often simply taken for granted in discussions of empathy and interpersonal experience: social visibility.