Morality and the View from Here

According to one influential conception of morality, being moral is a matter of acting from or in accordance with a moral point of view, a point of view which is arrived at by abstracting from a more natural, pre-ethical, personal point of view, and recognizing that each person's personal point of view has equal standing. The idea that, were it not for morality, rational persons would act from their respectively personal points of view is, however, simplistic and misleading. Because our nonmoral reasons cannot all be adequately captured as falling within any single, unified and coherent point of view, morality cannot be adequately understood as a matter of abstracting from such points of view and taking them all equally into account. After considering several ways of modifying the initial conception of morality in a way that accommodates the variety of nonmoral reasons that do not have their source in a personal point of view, the paper concludes with the suggestion that we free ourselves more thoroughly from the grip of the metaphor that takes morality as a whole to be a matter of acting in accordance with the judgments of a single unified and coherent point of view.     

The Powerful Other: How Divine Control Shapes the Relationship Between Personal Control and Psychological Distress

In the sociological study of mental health, the sense of personal control represents a core psychological resource, but some studies document a curvilinear association between personal control and depressive symptoms. This body of research is largely secular in orientation, even though research also demonstrates that some individuals believe in an involved and engaged Powerful Other (e.g., God). We evaluate if such beliefs moderate the relationship between personal control and depression. Using data from the 2005 Work, Stress, and Health Study in the United States (N = 1,791), we first demonstrate that the sense of personal control has an overall curvilinear association with depression, in line with previous research. Then, we document that divine control beliefs modify this association such that the curvilinear association is found primarily among individuals with low levels of divine control. By contrast, among those who more strongly endorse divine control, we observe no relationship between personal control and depression. We situate our findings in the differing and complicated perspectives on the implications of religious beliefs for psychological resources and well‐being.     

Who is my Jung? Memories,Reflections, Prospects

The author describes his personal and professional journey in relation to the subject of the AJA 40^th anniversary conference, ‘Who is my Jung?’ The first part of the paper covers his early life and his attempt to bring together two opposing parts within him: valuation of a scientific approach, and an interest in the inner world, dreams and the paranormal. Discussion of his professional life follows, including his relationship with Gerhard Adler, past problems and splits within the Jungian community and the author's attempts to heal these. The value of both remembering and forgetting is questioned. This leads onto ideas that bring value and meaning to his work and life, and which bridge the inner divisions he felt in his early life: notably Jung's focus on applying scientific theory to the mystery of the psyche, his relational attitude (exemplified by the dialectical process and his interest in countertransference) and his theory of synchronicity. Recent discussion in Jungian writing has questioned the nature of synchronistic experiences and explored how they may emerge naturally from complex systems. The paper ends the author's continuing journey with two personal vignettes describing how meaning may emerge from the unconscious.     

Personal Debt,Cognitive Delinquency and Techniques of Governmentality: Neoliberal Constructions of Financial Inadequacy in the UK

In the UK in recent years, there has been a considerable and sustained increase in both levels of personal debt and over‐indebtedness. This commentary argues that recent UK policy formulation on personal debt management has sidelined problematic macroscopic political and economic changes by locating personal debt as a problem of individual financial incompetence. Through specific institutions, tools, techniques and practices, certain configurations of people in debt have been rendered knowable and changeable. In doing so, public policies that have brought about a greater need for a greater number of people to rely on personal debt remain largely beyond public view and have instead been reconstituted as problems of access to financial capability training. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motivation and social contexts: a crossnational pilot study of achievement, power, and affiliation motives

Previous research suggests that there is a relationship between social contexts (e.g., economic growth, engagement in wars) and motives within populations. In particular, high achievement motive is associated with subsequent economic growth, which in turn increases power motive. Increased national achievement and power motives have been argued to precede social changes that lead to decreased affiliation motives, and engagement in wars. The present study aimed to examine differences in achievement, power, and affiliation motives between 266 college students in China (a nation with sustained high economic growth) and 255 college students in the USA (a nation with previously strong but now slowing economic growth, and engaged in war). Analysis of personal strivings suggested that Chinese college students showed significantly higher levels of achievement motive than the American college students, but American college students showed significantly higher levels of affiliation motive than Chinese college students. Overall, males exhibited higher achievement motivation than females. No significant interaction effects were found for gender by location for any of the three motives. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research.     

“Practical Divine Influence”: Socioeconomic Status and Belief in the Prosperity Gospel

The “prosperity gospel” is an understudied feature of the religious landscape of the United States. Little is known about the social patterning of prosperity gospel beliefs. We focus on two core dimensions of socioeconomic status (SES)—education and income—as potential influences. Our analyses of data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's 2006 Survey of Pentecostals produce three findings. First, education and income have negative and mostly independent associations with prosperity gospel beliefs. Second, SES‐based patterns remain after accounting for other attributes of the religious role. Third, while most education‐based differences are contingent upon the attributes of the religious role, these contingencies are not replicated for income‐based differences. These observations reinforce the long‐standing claim that SES plays a pivotal—and complex—role in the social patterning of religious beliefs.     

Perceptions of personal sex discrimination: the role of belief in a just world and situational ambiguity

The roles of belief in a just world (BJW) and discrimination against ones' group in perceptions of personal discrimination were examined. Female participants (n = 63) were personally discriminated against in a laboratory setting. We manipulated whether the experimenter appeared to discriminate against other participants, which presumably made the presence of personal discrimination less ambiguous, or did not appear to discriminate against others, which presumably made personal discrimination more ambiguous. In the no group discrimination condition, but not in the group discrimination condition, participants' perceptions of being personally discriminated against depended on individual differences in BJW: Women with a strong BJW perceived less personal discrimination than those with a weak BJW. Also, strong BJW women in the group discrimination condition perceived less personal discrimination than strong BJW women in the no group discrimination condition.     

Threat to Ethnic Identity: The Experience of White Afrikaans-Speaking Participants in Postapartheid South Africa

Abstract

The dismantling of apartheid and the postapartheid dispensation had far-reaching implications for all the citizens of South Africa. In an urban sample of White Afrikaans-speaking South Africans (Afrikaners) in postapartheid South Africa, the authors investigated perceptions of threat to ethnic identity, as well as correlates of those perceptions. The respondents experienced threat on 2 levels: The 1st was distinctive continuity, the concern that their ethnic group would not continue as a distinctive group in society. The 2nd was the evaluative dimension of ethnic identity (i.e., well-being), the concern that group membership would no longer contribute to positive self-esteem. The respondents experienced greater threat on the 2nd level, reflecting predominantly negative experiences as White Afrikaans-speaking persons in postapartheid South Africa. A high threat perception on the 2nd level was associated with (a) a perception of other groups' negative evaluations of their ethnic group, (b) negative attitudes toward political changes, and (c) perceptions of illegitimacy and instability of the postapartheid political system. The respondents who felt that Afrikaners would not continue as a distinctive group in society had a more positive attitude toward the sociopolitical changes, did not show strong ethnic identification, and had a negative collective self-esteem. They were also politically more liberal. Those findings are discussed in relation to theoretical expectations.     

Art as Orientation

What is it that we lack in everyday life that causes us to value art so highly? This article argues that (almost) all values are to be understood in terms of a needs‐satisfaction system, and hence that the value of art can be understood only with reference to the state of the appreciator prior to engagement with the artwork. Aesthetic appreciation can be analysed as a process, which can be described in empirically based psychological terms, leading to a functional view of aesthetic experience as potentially enhancing the individual's orientation at sensory, cognitive, and interpersonal levels; our motivation is a special form of pleasure. Various objections are then considered, with particular attention to the role of pleasure in connection with tragedy; the relation of art to related cultural pursuits is also briefly indicated.     

Well-being through learning: a systematic review of learning interventions in the workplace and their impact on well-being

The view that learning is central to well-being is widely held and the workplace is an important setting in which learning takes place. Evaluations of the effectiveness of well-being interventions in work settings are commonplace, but to date, there has been no systematic review of the effectiveness of learning interventions with regard to their impact on well-being. The review synthesizes evidence from 41 intervention studies, and although no studies report a negative impact on well-being, 14 show no effect on well-being, with 27 studies having a positive impact. We classify the studies according to the primary purpose of the learning intervention: to develop personal resources for well-being through learning; to develop professional capabilities through learning; to develop leadership skills through learning; and to improve organizational effectiveness through organizational-level learning. Although there is an abundance of workplace learning interventions, few are evaluated from a well-being perspective despite the commonly held assumption that learning yields positive emotional and psychological outcomes. The evidence indicates an important gap in our evaluation of and design of workplace learning interventions and their impact on well-being, beyond those focusing on personal resources. This raises important theoretical and practical challenges concerning the relationship between learning and well-being in the context of professional capability enhancement, leadership capability and organizational learning.