Well-Being and Social Justice Among Moroccan Migrants in Southern Spain

The decision to migrate is normally based on expectations of improving one’s actual living conditions and therefore, one’s well-being. However, these expectations are not usually met in receiving contexts that relegate newcomers to lower power positions. From a liberating community psychology approach, this study aims to develop a predictive model of the well-being of Moroccan migrants living in southern Spain. Data were collected from a survey sample of 633 migrants (the average age was 31.9 years and 51.8 % were women) from 20 territorial units of Andalusia. Through a process of multilevel regression analysis, this study reveals that the well-being of the Moroccan community is closely determined by the following: (a) the level of social justice in the receiving context (openness to diversity of receiving communities, cultural sensitivity of community services, and residential integration); and (b) the individual strengths of the population (use of active coping strategies, satisfaction with the receiving context, and temporal stability in the new environment). These results empirically support the impact that different ecological levels of analysis have on well-being. Major theoretical contributions of the model and useful suggestions for improving migrant well-being are discussed.     

Ethnography in Community Psychology: Promises and Tensions

Community psychology recognizes the need for research methods that illuminate context, culture, diversity, and process. One such method, ethnography, has crossed into multiple disciplines from anthropology, and indeed, community psychologists are becoming community ethnographers. Ethnographic work stands at the intersection of bridging universal questions with the particularities of people and groups bounded in time, geographic location, and social location. Ethnography is thus historical and deeply contextual, enabling a rich, in-depth understanding of communities that is aligned with the values and goals of community psychology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the potential of ethnography for community psychology and to encourage its use within the field as a method to capture culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities. We discuss the method of ethnography, draw connections to community psychology values and goals, and identify tensions from our experiences doing ethnography. Overall, we assert that ethnography is a method that resonates with community psychology and present this paper as a resource for those interested in using this method in their research or community activism.     

The fight against prejudice in older adults: perspective taking effectiveness

Inhibition of prejudice appears to be more problematic for older adults, hence the need to develop programs to reduce intergroup bias at later stages in life. Perspective taking was analyzed in this study, as one of various cognitive strategies that have been shown to reduce such bias. Data on a sample of 63 Spanish participants with a mean age of 64.1 years was gathered after an intervention based on mental imagery, aimed at reducing explicit prejudice. A wide array of variables was measured (personality traits, values, empathy, and attribution) which may moderate effectiveness in perspective taking. Despite no main effect was found, effects due to interaction of perspective taking found in OLS regression analysis revealed that perspective taking based intervention was effective for some older adults, particularly those who had low scores on agreeableness, empathy, and universalism, and high scores on conformity. The conclusions suggest that perspective taking might be successfully applied to some profiles of older people albeit it is not as strong and transferable strategy as it used to be thought.     

Beside the point: Mothers’ head nodding and shaking gestures during parent–child play

Understanding the context for children's social learning and language acquisition requires consideration of caregivers’ multi-modal (speech, gesture) messages. Though young children can interpret both manual and head gestures, little research has examined the communicative input that children receive via parents’ head gestures. We longitudinally examined the frequency and communicative functions of mothers’ head nodding and head shaking gestures during laboratory play sessions for 32 mother–child dyads, when the children were 14, 20, and 30 months of age. The majority of mothers produced head nods more frequently than head shakes. Both gestures contributed to mothers’ verbal attempts at behavior regulation and dialog. Mothers’ head nods primarily conveyed agreement with, and attentiveness to, children's utterances, and accompanied affirmative statements and yes/no questions. Mothers’ head shakes primarily conveyed prohibitions and statements with negations. Changes over time appeared to reflect corresponding developmental changes in social and communicative dimensions of caregiver–child interaction. Directions for future research are discussed regarding the role of head gesture input in socialization and in supporting language development.     

Media representations of environmental issues: From scientific to political discourse

IntroductionThe media is considered to be a social agent that intervenes in the elaboration of social representations of environmental issues.ObjectiveThis research analyses media representations of environmental issues and how they have been constructed and transformed from the Rio Summit in 1992 to 2006. The authors adopted a constructionist approach based on the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1961/1976) to describe the generation of information by the mass media.MethodA sample of 1039 news articles from two Spanish newspapers (La Vanguardia and El País) was analysed. The period of study ranged from the Rio Earth Summit to several years after the Johannesburg Summit (1992–2006), and the study analyses both the content and form of the environmental news.ResultsThis longitudinal study shows not only an increase in environmental news during the period of analysis but also an increased variety of themes addressed and represented. The results evidence significant urban problems in recent years. The environment has shifted from being associated with nature to being predominately associated with the urban environment.ConclusionThe results suggest that there has been a movement from scientific to political discourse and a change towards greater reflection and social recognition of the relevance of environmental issues.     

Les effets des demandes au travail et de la justice organisationnelle sur l’épuisement professionnel : quels effets médiateurs du soutien social et de l’estime de soi ?

This study focuses on the burnout framework and aims at examining the links between, on the one hand, the psychological burden, decision latitude, organizational justice and self-esteem and, on the other hand, the burnout. We measure the mediator effect of the social support. The data derived from a questionnaire submitted to 122 managers allowed us to establish a correlation matrix, linear regressions on the burnout and mediation analyzes. The results indicate that the predominant variables would be the organizational justice, support from colleagues, self-esteem and affects. The mediator effect of the social support between the different types of justice and the burnout was partially validated.     

How school-based dancing classes change affective and collaborative networks of adolescents

ObjectiveThe present research investigated the effects of adolescents' co-participation in a federally funded dance intervention project on students' affective and collaborative networks. In the intervention, students instructed by professional dancers collaboratively developed a dance-choreography during regular class hours in student groups. We expected that the number of reciprocated affective and collaborative ties should increase in classrooms participating in the intervention, but that boys should particularly benefit from the intervention.DesignWe used a quasi-experimental untreated control group design with dependent pretest and posttest samples. Participants were 421 youths (48% boys) in 23 classrooms of primary and secondary schools in Berlin, Germany. Of these, 226 (54%) participated in the intervention. Classrooms from the same grade and school were recruited as comparison groups. We assessed both networks using sociometric questionnaires.Method/ResultsWe found a significant Treatment × Gender interaction showing that reciprocated collaborative relations increased only for boys in the intervention group. Analyses probing potential mechanisms showed this was due to their choosing more collaboration partners, in particular more girls.ConclusionFindings suggest that school-based dancing programs encouraging coordinated physical activity in student groups may be particularly beneficial for boys, encouraging them to consider girls as academic cooperation partners and to proactively develop their collaborative networks.     

领导力的社会认同理论：主要内容及研究进展

作为“以下属为中心”的领导力理论,领导力的社会认同理论是社会心理学与领导力研究结合的代表.该理论采用社会认同解释领导力产生和发挥作用的过程,主要命题为：（1）群体成员通过社会认同选择有效的领导,具有高群体原型代表性的领导者最具有效性;（2）领导者可以通过塑造下属成员的社会认同来实施领导.除了以上内容外,还对该理论的实验证据及优缺点也进行了系统阐述,同时与其它领导力理论进行了整合,最后提出了未来研究的方向.     

Good intentions gone awry? Effects of weight-related social control on health and well-being

A negative body image has been associated with a variety of negative health and well-being outcomes. Social pressures from others, in the form of weight-related social control, may serve to exacerbate this effect, especially for college-aged women. Undergraduate students (N = 399) completed a variety of questionnaires assessing weight-related social control, well-being, and diet and exercise behaviors. The results suggest that weight is associated with a variety of negative health and well-being outcomes and particularly for women, weight-related social control is also associated with these negative effects. In addition, men of higher body mass indexes (BMIs) or higher self-perceived weight did not experience negative health and well-being outcomes to the same degree that overweight women did. Parents in particular seem to instigate weight-related social control to change students’ diet and exercise behaviors. These results help clarify the effects of weight-related social control in a college population, where weight may be especially important.     

Collaboration inflation: Egocentric source monitoring errors following collaborative remembering

Following collaborative remembering, people may adopt their partner's contributions as their own memory. In two studies, we asked people to study partially overlapping lists of words. During collaborative remembering, dyads either worked to include all words no matter who studied them or limited recall to only words studied by both dyad members. This differential focus on source information during collaborative recall impacted performance on a later source memory test. Nonetheless we found frequent source monitoring errors that displayed an egocentric bias. People were more likely to claim their partner's contributions as their own memories than attribute their memories to their partners. In collaborative remembering, people work to construct an agreed upon version of the past that quickly becomes each individual's memory.