The Role of Government and Lobbying in the Creation of a Health Profession: The Legal Foundations of Counseling

The state and federal governments, along with private industry, play an important role in the development of a health profession. State governments establish training standards through licensure laws, and state programs dictate employment and payment opportunities. The federal government unifies a profession through recognition in national health care programs. Private industry provides public access through private health insurance. The counseling profession has spent decades opening these federal, state, and private programs to become an established health profession.     

Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy is deeply influenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as ‘discourse theory.’ That the author is not willing to classify his own approach as such is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad, who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hanegraaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and von Stuckrad's Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden: Brill, 2010) reveals that this is a misleading classification and that Hanegraaff's study comes closer to what discourse theory is all about. As a consequence, Esotericism and the Academy is the very first study on ‘Western esotericism’ that offers a convincing justification of this particular label as an overarching discursive category.     

Selling the War? System‐Justifying Effects of Commercial Advertising on Civilian Casualty Tolerance

In times of war, news media coverage of the plight of civilian casualties plays a critical role in shaping attitudes regarding war's human costs. We proposed that these attitudes may also be surreptitiously influenced by the commercial advertisements that often accompany this coverage. Specifically, we hypothesized that when newspaper articles pertaining to civilian victims of war are flanked by luxury ads, conservatives, relative to liberals, will subsequently exhibit less concern for these victims. This proposition was based on the notion that commercial ads, particularly those promoting luxury items, make salient the gap between the “haves” and the “have‐nots” and thereby, at least implicitly, threaten the legitimacy of the current socioeconomic system. Drawing upon system justification theory, we posited that this threat would lead individuals with stronger system‐justification tendencies (conservatives), relative to those more open to challenging the current system (liberals), to show greater tolerance for civilian war casualties in order to defend the system's integrity. Evidence consistent with this hypothesis was found in a quasi‐experimental study (n = 329).     

Changing Parties,Changing Partisans: The Personalization of Partisan Attachments in Western Europe

This article investigates the effects of the deep transformations in the relationship between West European class‐mass parties and their electorates. Particular attention is paid to the changing nature of individuals' partisan attachments, which are hypothesized to be less rooted in social and ideological identities and more in individual attitudes towards increasingly visible partisan objects. The main objective of this article is to examine the influence of voters' attitudes towards one of these “objects”—the party leaders—in determining psychological attachments with the parties. The analysis concentrates on the two main cleavage‐based parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The empirical findings highlight the declining ability of social identities (class and religious) to predict individual feelings of partisan attachment, as well as the growing influence of voters' attitudes towards party leaders. The concluding section points to the crucial role that political psychology can play in our understanding of democratic elections' outcomes.     

Voting and Values: Reciprocal Effects over Time

Two studies investigated reciprocal effects of values and voting. Study 1 measured adults' basic values and core political values both before (n = 1379) and following (n = 1030) the 2006 Italian national election. Both types of values predicted voting. Voting choice influenced subsequent core political values but not basic values. The political values of free enterprise, civil liberties, equality, law and order, military intervention, and accepting immigrants changed to become more compatible with the ideology of the chosen coalition. Study 2 measured core political values before (n = 697) and following (n = 506) the 2008 Italian national election. It largely replicated the reciprocal effects of voting and political values of Study 1. In addition, it demonstrated that left‐right ideology mediated the reciprocal effects of voting and political values. Moreover, voter certainty moderated these effects. Political values predicted vote choice more weakly among undecided than decided voters, but voting choice led to more value change among undecided voters.     

What's in a Disorder

Abstract

This paper analyzes the emergence of two FDA-approved products to treat “sexual disorders”: Viagra, a drug prescribed for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, and the Eros, a device prescribed for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction. Through an analysis of advertising and promotional materials for Viagra and the Eros, we argue that these pharmaceutical devices and the discourses they circulate reinforce normative gender ideals by enacting dominant cultural narratives of masculinity, femininity, and male and female sexuality. These cultural narratives of normative gender structure sexuality in such a way that reinforces certain kinds of masculinity, femininity, and (hetero)sexuality, thereby rendering “atypical” gender and sexual expressions, desires, and appearances invisible and marginal. We argue that these constructions reify cultural ideologies about “what counts” as legitimate and appropriate sexuality and that these constructions have profound implication for social actors, sexologists, and therapists.     

Political intolerance: the role of intergroup threat and negative intergroup emotion

This study investigated whether the perception of intergroup threat, and intergroup emotion, are related to political intolerance. One hundred and twenty three South African undergraduate students (females?=?76%; males?=?24%; White?=?65%; Coloured?=?24%; Indian?=?8%; Chinese?=?2%; mean age =?19.8, SD?=?3.03 years) were randomly assigned to either a heightened (n?=?68) or low intergroup threat condition (n?=?55). Data on intergroup threat, intergroup emotion and political intolerance were collected utilising a questionnaire. T-test effect comparisons including multiple regression analyses were computed to determine effects of intergroup threat and negative intergroup emotion on political intolerance. Results revealed negative intergroup emotion and perceived intergroup threat to predict political intolerance. Negative intergroup emotion mediated the relationship between perceived threat and political intolerance. These findings suggest that intergroup threat may lead to the rise of negative intergroup emotion which in turn creates an environment conducive to the development of political intolerance.     

Stereotypical attitudes amongst black students at a rural historically black South African university

This study investigated stereotypical attitudes towards race amongst Black students (N=274) attending a historically Black South African university (females=62%; mean age of 22.15 years; SD=3.00 years). Data on group stereotyping by race were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. The data were analysed for themes using discourse analysis. The findings indicated that Black students from a rural background stereotyped those from urban centres as lacking in African culture and being overly westernised. Conversely, rural Blacks from urban settings stereotyped those from rural areas as respectful, cultured and materially poor. Regardless of geographical origin, the Black students perceived English-speaking Whites as competent and friendly, while Afrikaans-speaking Whites were stereotyped as racist, aggressive and hardworking. The Black students perceived Indian South Africans as unethical and deceitful whilst Coloureds were noted to lack culture and to be aggressive. Findings suggest stereotypical racist language or discourse to be persistent among a student population with historical disadvantage.     

The Vatican and Europe: Political Theology and Ecclesiology in Papal Statements from Pius XII to Benedict XVI

The article examines the origins and evolution of the Vatican's political theology and ecclesiology for Europe from Pius XII (especially after the Second World War) and including the pontificates of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It seeks to examine the continuities of the ‘Idea of Europe’ in papal thought against a background of changing political context – the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the fall of the communist state system, the emergence of a united but diverse Europe after 1989. The political structures of the continent now include within its geographic sweep Western and Eastern Christian churches which, divided by tradition and modern history, find their relationship a key marker in the contemporary religious identity of Europe. This reality is a significant framework for Vatican thinking on Europe especially for John Paul II and Benedict XVI.