Audience reaction as a determinant of the speaker's self-persuasion

This paper tests effects of audience feedback on speaker attitudes. One hundred and seven male subjects with initial beliefs on both sides of an issue (women's role) were assigned to speak for or against their own position; then an “audience” provided one of three types of feedback (speaker was sincere, speaker was insincere, no feedback) in a 2 × 2 × 3 design. Subjects who received sincere feedback showed greater change in the direction of their speech than did those who received insincere feedback. No feedback treatments resulted in intermediate change. This sincere > no feedback > insincere ordering of means held for both pro- and counterattitudinal speakers and for both pretest attitudes. A main effect for pretest attitude was also obtained. Two additional control groups allow for a separate analysis of the effects of (1) preparing and delivering the speech, and (2) audience reaction to the speech.     

The effect of physical appearance on the judgment of guilt,interpersonal attraction,and severity of recommended punishment in a simulated jury task

Both an opinion survey and an experimental study were conducted. The survey revealed that substantial majorities of those polled believed (a) that a defendant's character and previous history should influence jurors' decision (79%) and (b) that the defendant's physical appearance should not bias these decisions (93%). The hypothesis, derived from a reinforcement model of interpersonal attraction and previous research on physical appearance, was that attractive defendants would be more positively evaluated than unattractive ones despite the seeming irrelevance of appearance to judicial decisions. The results of a simulated jury task were that physically attractive defendants were evaluated with less certainty of guilt (p < .05), less severe recommended punishment (p < .005), and greater attraction (p < .005), than were unattractive defendants. The importance of independent affective and cognitive components of the attraction process were emphasized.     

Situation-specific variables as determinants of perceived environmental aesthetic quality and perceived crowdedness

It was hypothesized that relevant situation-specific variables may act along with objective physical conditions to determine environmental perception, and that the exclusive use of the physical level of an environmental stimulus to predict behavior may, therefore, be inadequate. A 2 × 4 between-subjects design was employed in which an attitudinally similar or dissimilar confederate interacted with a subject at one of four distances. As hypothesized, subjects who interacted with a similar confederate judged the environment to be of higher aesthetic quality, perceived themselves to be less crowded, and felt affectively more positive than subjects who interacted with a dissimilar other. The results were also interpreted as supporting the utility of the Byrne-Clore (1970) reinforcementaffect model of evaluative responses as a means of predicting environmental perception and the behavioral response to environmental stimuli.     

Informational cues and attributions based on role behavior

A recent experiment by Messick and Reeder (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1972, 18, 482–491) attempted to extend Jones, Davis, and Gergen's (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 63, 302–310) classic finding that out-of-role behavior.is more informative for person perception than in-role behavior. It is argued, however, that this study confounded two variables, role performance and occupation. Evidence is presented that the occupation variable alone could have produced Messick and Reeder's results. Both variables seem to affect attributions. The importance of these findings for relating attribution theory and role theory is discussed.     

How Palestinian students invoke the category “human” to challenge negative treatment and media representations

Dehumanisation of opponents in conflict has been shown to be a common and damaging feature in the media. What is not understood is how this dehumanisation is challenged, which is the novel contribution that this research will make. Drawing on focus groups (four focus groups each with four to six participants) conducted in the West Bank in 2015 that discussed media coverage of international conflict, this article demonstrates the ways in which young Palestinian participants attempt to rehumanize themselves in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Discursive analysis demonstrates how this was achieved in a number of ways: categorising Palestinians as “human being”; by directly and explicitly challenging the suggestion that Palestinians are less than human; by drawing the enemy into the category “human”; and by embodying the “human.” These findings, the first to address the talk of young Palestinians about the reporting of violent conflicts around the world, demonstrate the importance of categorization and how, in this case, the specifics of the use of the (human) category work to rehumanize Palestinians in the face of (claims of) dehumanisation.     

“We Deal With Symptoms Rather Than Causes”: Antipoverty Policy Making in Occupied Palestinian Territories

Since the Palestinian National Authority assumed governance, antipoverty reforms implemented to combat social problems and traumatic stressors have had limited success. Few empirical studies have investigated policy-making obstacles in this context. Using a social protection framework, this study examined the policy-making environment in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with Palestinian ministry officials and archival records. Findings revealed a restrictive, obstacle-ridden environment that severely constrains development of high-quality policies for meeting needs of Palestinian citizens. Some limitations were similar to those in other emerging nations; others were unique to the case of Palestine. Policy and research implications are discussed.     

Raising Salafī Children in the West

Despite the importance salafīs place on children’s education, this aspect of their discourse has hardly been studied. The present article examines how salafī jurists based in the Arab world, salafī imams based in the West and salafī authors of English-language children’s books conceptualize the norms for raising children, and what they believe should be done specifically to assure the virtuous Islamic upbringing of children in Western societies. Exploring issues ranging from what constitutes proper schooling to whether Muslim children may befriend non-Muslim children and whether it is permissible to celebrate birthdays, play foosball or play with dolls, the article analyses the educational challenges salafī communities in the West face as enclaves that resist both majority secular societies and the majority among Muslim minorities, and presents the nuances, and in some cases contestations, among salafī leaders as to how these challenges should be addressed and prioritized.     

HUMAN CLONING THROUGH THE EYES OF MUSLIM SCHOLARS: THE NEW PHENOMENON OF THE ISLAMIC INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOSCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS

In the wake of the February 1997 announcement that Dolly the sheep had been cloned, Muslim religious scholars together with Muslim scientists held two conferences to discuss cloning from an Islamic perspective. They were organized by two influential Islamic international religioscientific institutions: the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences (IOMS) and the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA). Both institutions comprise a large number of prominent religious scholars and well-known scientists who participated in the discussions at the conferences. This article gives a comprehensive analysis of these conferences, the relation between science and religion as reflected in the discussions there, and the further influence of these discussions on Muslims living in the West. Modern discussions on Islamic bioethics show that formulating an Islamic perspective on these issues is not the exclusive prerogative of religious scholars. Formulating such perspectives has become a collective process in which scientists play an essential role. Such a collective approach strengthens the religious authority of Muslim scholars and makes it more influential rather than undermining it.     

Hidden presence: race and/in the history,construct, and study of western esotericism

ABSTRACT

Except for a few studies that explore the intersections between esoteric ideas/practices and white supremacy, race has largely been ignored in the field of Western esotericism. This article seeks to partake in remedying this lacuna. To do so, it provides a deconstructive analysis of the way race has operated in the field. I argue that race, although consistently overlooked, has functioned as a ‘hidden presence’ that has shaped both the historical formation of the field and the construct of Western esotericism – so much so, in fact, that we may conceive it as a subtext in and for the dominant ‘grand narrative’ of Western esotericism. In conclusion, I investigate recent attempts to omit ‘Western’ as a definitive adjective in the study of esotericism, thereby proposing that, even as we move ‘beyond the West,’ we must also continue to investigate the entanglements of ‘Western’ and whiteness.