Adolescents' Political Socialization in Changing Contexts: An International Study in the Spirit of Nevitt Sanford

The recently completed IEA Civic Education Study collected data from 140,000 adolescent students in a total of 29 countries. A recent examination of the work of Nevitt Sanford shows that many aspects of the IEA Civic Education Study are parallel to methods and conclusions of his research from the 1950s through the 1970s and partake in the spirit of his work as well as extending it. These parallels include the use of a contextualized approach in the study of adolescents' socialization and the value of studying groups with extreme response patterns.     

Religion, Death Attitudes, and Belief in Afterlife in the Elderly: Untangling the Relationships

The study investigated the relationship between religion, belief in afterlife, and death attitudes (death anxiety and death acceptance) in an elderly population using instruments with sound psychometric properties. Survey data was collected from 71 elderly participants. Results indicated a strong correlation between belief in afterlife and intrinsic religion, and differential statistically significant relationships between intrinsic religion and both death anxiety and death acceptance depending on whether the effects of belief in afterlife were partialed out. Findings were discussed in light of the absence of clinically meaningful results and, the role that belief in afterlife appears to play in the literature investigating religion and death anxiety.     

Attitudes Toward Violence Against Women: A Cross-Nation Study

An understanding of attitudes toward violence against women is vital for effective prevention strategies. In this study we examined attitudes regarding violence against women in samples of undergraduate women and men students from four countries: India, Japan, Kuwait, and the United States. Attitudes toward sexual assault and spousal physical violence differed between men and women and across the four countries. Variations in gender differences across countries indicated that, for attitudes regarding sexual assault of women in particular, sociocultural factors may be a stronger influence than gender. Findings suggest the importance of examining differences within the larger sociocultural context of political, historical, religious, and economic influences on attitudes toward gender roles and violence against women.     

Changes in Attitudes Toward Women's Roles: Predicting Gender-Role Traditionalism Among College Students

National college student data derived from the 1996 Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey and the 2000 College Student Survey were used to assess longitudinal changes in gender-role traditionalism across 4 years of college. Applying the Input–Environment–Outcome model to blocked stepwise regression analyses, the predictive value of students' precollege characteristics and predispositions, and various college environments and experiences, were assessed for men and women. Findings indicated that students' levels of traditionalism declined during college. Although men and women tended to change similarly on this dimension, women held more egalitarian views than did men at college entry and 4 years later. Regression results pointed to the relevance of peers, academic engagement, women's studies courses, and diversity experiences for students' gender-role attitudes 4 years after college entry.     

社区心理辅导实验模型的建构及其价值

建立实验模型,探索社区心理辅导的路径、具体实施的方法及其价值,为居民的心理健康和社区精神文明工作提供心理学理论和实践的依据;方法：采用症状自评量表(SCL-90)评估辅导前和辅导后社区居民的心理状况并进行自身比较;结果：l、辅导前居民的心理卫生存在问题较多;2、辅导后居民的心理卫生出现显著的变化;3、与辅导前比较,辅导后的居民心理卫生有明明显进步,特别在敌对的人际关系、偏执的认知方式和焦虑、抑郁的情绪等方面改变最为突出。结论：l、开展社区心理辅导是促进精神文明建设的全新理念和有效方法。2、建立、健全社区心理辅导网络对提高居民心理素质,减少心理疾病的发生、发展具有重要而又深远的作用。3、社区心理辅导实验模型的建立为广泛开展有关工作提供了理论和实践依据。     

The validity of the three-component model of organizational commitment in a Chinese context

This study examined the construct validity of Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment in a Chinese context and compared levels of OC between the Chinese sample and previously published data from Canada and South Korea. In a study of 226 Chinese employees in six foreign-invested companies, a five-factor oblique model, which included both substantive and method factors, fit the data best. However, the three-component model had a reasonably good fit. The proposed antecedents of each of the three principal OC dimensions tended to associate most strongly with their respective scales. Affective commitment and normative commitment significantly predicted job satisfaction and all three components predicted turnover intention, although associations between continuance commitment and these outcomes were moderated by normative commitment. Finally, we found that normative and affective commitment were significantly higher in the Chinese sample than in previously published samples from Canada and South Korea. Continuance commitment in the Chinese sample was lower than the Canadian and Korean samples. Implications of these findings are discussed in more detail.     

环境伦理学中的道德客体与正义取向

本文尝试通过分析现今较为流行的几种环境伦理观倡导的环境义务对象及其理论根据,指出其合理因素和缺陷所在,进而提出价值共同体的概念,以此阐明人类在环境义务对象上的多样性和复杂性,并提出一种兼顾多层次对象的环境正义观。     

Are Asian cultures really less ageist than Western ones? It depends on the questions asked

Ageism is an increasing concern in ageing populations such as Asia and Europe. A prevalent assumption in psychology is that Eastern cultures may be less prone to ageism because of norms and values that honour and respect elders. Yet, evidence for this culture hypothesis is inconclusive. The current study examines this issue by comparing attitudes towards older people in an Eastern and Western samples of 184 young people from the UK and 249 from Taiwan. Attitudes to old age were measured both as meta‐perceptions (the perceived normative context) and personal attitudes in regard to the cognitive, affective and behavioural components of ageism. Consistent with the culture hypothesis, meta‐perceptions about competence and admiration were more positive in Taiwan than in the UK, yet other meta‐perceptions were more negative pointing to the existence of old age subtypes. Personal attitudes about older people in regard to the affective and behavioural, but not the cognitive component, were more negative in Taiwan than in the UK. Thus, cultural differences in ageism are more nuanced than suggested by previous research. The importance of distinguishing between the normative context and personal attitudes as well as the different components of ageism is highlighted by the present findings.     

The Social Causes and Political Consequences of Group Empathy

Recent scholarship has discovered significant racial/ethnic group variation in response to political threats such as immigration and terrorism. Surprisingly, minority groups often simultaneously perceive themselves to be at greater risk from such threats and yet still prefer more open immigration policies and civil liberties protections. We suggest a group‐level empathy process may explain this puzzle: Due to their higher levels of empathy for other disadvantaged groups, many minority group members support protections for others even when their own interests are threatened. Little is known, however, about the unique properties of group empathy or its role in policy opinion formation. In this study, we examine the reliability and validity of our new measure of group empathy, the Group Empathy Index (GEI), demonstrating that it is distinct from other social and political predispositions such as ethnocentrism, social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, ideology, and partisanship. We then propose a theory about the development of group empathy in reaction to life experiences based on one's race/ethnicity, gender, age, and education. Finally, we examine the power of group empathy to predict policy attitudes and political behavior.     

Specific emotions as mediators of the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice: findings across multiple participant and target groups

Emotions are increasingly being recognised as important aspects of prejudice and intergroup behaviour. Specifically, emotional mediators play a key role in the process by which intergroup contact reduces prejudice towards outgroups. However, which particular emotions are most important for prejudice reduction, as well as the consistency and generality of emotion–prejudice relations across different in-group–out-group relations, remain uncertain. To address these issues, in Study 1 we examined six distinct positive and negative emotions as mediators of the contact–prejudice relations using representative samples of U.S. White, Black, and Asian American respondents (N?=?639). Admiration and anger (but not other emotions) were significant mediators of the effects of previous contact on prejudice, consistently across different perceiver and target ethnic groups. Study 2 examined the same relations with student participants and gay men as the out-group. Admiration and disgust mediated the effect of past contact on attitude. The findings confirm that not only negative emotions (anger or disgust, based on the specific types of threat perceived to be posed by an out-group), but also positive, status- and esteem-related emotions (admiration) mediate effects of contact on prejudice, robustly across several different respondent and target groups.