Water as a Commons: An Exploratory Study on the Motives for Collective Action Among Italian Water Movement Activists

In many communities, supplying water and sanitation is a huge task, and the fact that these essential services can be carried out by the private sector is a debated issue. This article presents an exploratory study aimed to identify the range of motives for collective action shared by activists of the Italian Movement for ‘Public Water’. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 28 activists and were qualitatively analysed. Five main motivational categories emerged: defending the right to water, preserving community ties, opposing to the Government and ‘water sellers’, preserving the environment and money interests. Each motive is based on a specific representation of the issue of water and privatization process. Findings provide further support for the importance of moral convictions and sense of community in collective action development and suggest a critical reconsideration of the role played by collective efficacy. The results are discussed in the framework of the psychosocial literature on collective action and community psychology perspectives on participatory processes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collectivism and coping: Current theories,evidence, and measurements of collective coping

A burgeoning body of cultural coping research has begun to identify the prevalence and the functional importance of collective coping behaviors among culturally diverse populations in North America and internationally. These emerging findings are highly significant as they evidence culture's impacts on the stress‐coping process via collectivistic values and orientation. They provide a critical counterpoint to the prevailing Western, individualistic stress and coping paradigm. However, current research and understanding about collective coping appear to be piecemeal and not well integrated. To address this issue, this review attempts to comprehensively survey, summarize, and evaluate existing research related to collective coping and its implications for coping research with culturally diverse populations from multiple domains. Specifically, this paper reviews relevant research and knowledge on collective coping in terms of: (a) operational definitions; (b) theories; (c) empirical evidence based on studies of specific cultural groups and broad cultural values/dimensions; (d) measurements; and (e) implications for future cultural coping research. Overall, collective coping behaviors are conceived as a product of the communal/relational norms and values of a cultural group across studies. They also encompass a wide array of stress responses ranging from value‐driven to interpersonally based to culturally conditioned emotional/cognitive to religion‐ and spirituality‐grounded coping strategies. In addition, this review highlights: (a) the relevance and the potential of cultural coping theories to guide future collective coping research; (b) growing evidence for the prominence of collective coping behaviors particularly among Asian nationals, Asian Americans/Canadians and African Americans/Canadians; (c) preference for collective coping behaviors as a function of collectivism and interdependent cultural value and orientation; and (d) six cultural coping scales. This study brings to light the present theoretical and methodological contributions as well as limitations of this body of literature and the implications it holds for future coping research.     

The development of social value orientation across different contexts

This study aimed to explore Chinese children's social value orientation across different ages and contexts. Revised decomposed games were used to measure the social value orientation of 9‐, 11‐, and 14‐year‐old children and college students as an adult group. About half of them were assigned to the hypothetical context of “equal payment group,” providing equal compensation for participation in the study, and the others to the “real payment group,” who got payment according to their own choices in the games. Results showed that 9‐ and 11‐year‐old children's choices differed between the two contexts: They made more prosocial choices in the hypothetical context, and more competitive choices in the “real payment” context. The 14‐year‐olds’ and adults’ choices were not significantly different in the two contexts. These results may imply that by 14 years of age, children have stable social value orientation, and their behavior reflects this value.     

How Does Religion Promote Forgiveness? Linking Beliefs,Orientations, and Practices

Scholars have long observed that religion and forgiveness are generally positively linked, but it is unclear why this is the case. This article proposes and tests potential mechanisms by which religion promotes forgiveness. Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, I find that holding a collaborative orientation toward God, subscribing to a pervasive role of religion, and believing God forgives are primary factors promoting one's propensity to forgive both oneself and others. These factors have varying influence on interpersonal forgiveness compared to self‐forgiveness and further illuminate the differences between the two processes. My findings demonstrate the importance of analyzing a person's religious beliefs and orientations directly, in addition to examining other dimensions of religion, such as affiliation, frequency of religious activity, and official religious teachings.     

Reflection-Impulsivity in Mexican Children: Cross-Cultural Relationships

Urban Mexican children aged 5 (n = 23) and 9 (n = 87) years were given the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT). The results indicate that the MFFT was a valid test of cognitive style for Mexican children. The younger children's MFFT performance was characterized as fast and inaccurate in relation to the older children's performance, which was slower and more accurate. Cross-cultural comparisons of Mexican MFFT scores with normative data from America, Japan, and Israel indicated that Mexican children were relatively impulsive in cognitive style in relation to children of other cultures. Potential factors contributing to these cross-cultural differences are discussed here.     

Maternal Depressed Mood and Perceptions of Child Temperament

Research has suggested that women who experience postpartum depression are subsequently more likely to perceive their preschool-aged children as temperamentally difficult and maladjusted. However, previous studies have not controlled for the effects of concurrent depression levels on maternal ratings of child temperament or evaluated the accuracy of maternal reports. In the present study we assessed maternal and paternal ratings of child temperament 2 years after subjects had participated in a study of postpartum depression. The findings indicate that correlations between postpartum depression and subsequent child temperament ratings were accounted for statistically by concurrent levels of depression. Although fathers' ratings corroborated some aspects of maternal perceptions, levels of parental agreement were only moderately high. Moreover, discrepancies between the parents' reports were significantly associated with maternal depression, indicating that parental disagreement is more likely when the wife is dysphoric.     

Unhappy Self-Esteem: A Meaningful Exception to the Rule

Self-esteem and well-being are often seen as closely related and sometimes even considered conceptually identical. In marked contrast to this association, the focus of this article is on experiences of a high level of self-esteem coexisting with a low level of well-being: unhappy self-esteem. Although these experiences constitute an exception to the general rule, they nevertheless have a theoretically coherent character. In this article, a framework was used in which the self was considered an organized process, and an idiographic assessment procedure—the method of self-confrontation—was called upon. The self-statements of 15 subjects in the Netherlands showing unhappy self-esteem were compared, and the phenomenon was found to clearly refer to anger and opposition.     

A Primer on Psychological Theory

This paper addresses some of the principal constituent elements in the formation of theories in the science of psychology. To that end, means of theory construction, concomitant theory functions and types, and norms of acceptance are presented. Where appropriate, efforts were made to cite particular historic or contemporary theories of human behavior as cogent exemplars.     

Psychological Researches in Schizophrenic Language and Thought

Seventy-two five- to seven-year-old boys were exposed to televised adult models and were then administered tests of resistance to deviation (moral behavior), moral choice, and moral judgment level. Boys exposed to a model who said he would resist deviating from a prohibition and who supported his statement with a morally realistic justification were subsequently more likely to use that model's statements to guide their own moral behavior and moral choice than were boys exposed to a model advocating resistance to deviation with a morally autonomous justification. Realistic models expressing a deviating moral choice led to more deviating moral choices in observers than did autonomous deviating models. The moral judgment levels of the boys were not significantly affected by the models. The boys' moral behavior was predictive of their moral choice while moral judgment level was not significantly related to the other two indices of morality.     

How Do Romantic Relationship Satisfaction,Gender Stereotypes,and Gender Relate to Future Time Orientation in Romantic Relationships?

The present study is an investigation into how romantic relationship satisfaction and attitudes toward gender stereotypes about romantic relationship and gender are related to future time orientation in romantic relationships (FTORR). Four hundred and thirteen (208 men and 205 women) university students taking elective psychology courses at Middle East Technical University were given a scale including items about FTORR, romantic relationship satisfaction, and attitudes toward gender stereotypes about romantic relationships. All the participants were then involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship. Multiple regression results showed that for the women, attitudes toward men's assertiveness and men's dominance in relationships were more important predictors of FTORR than relationship satisfaction. For the men, attitudes toward men's assertiveness and romantic relationship satisfaction were important predictors of FTORR, but attitude toward men's dominance was not a predictor of FTORR. Women were more future oriented in their ongoing romantic relationships than were men. Finally, participants who were highly satisfied with their relationships scored higher on FTORR than those who were less satisfied.