The role of vital exhaustion in predicting the recurrence of vascular events: A longitudinal study

Background/objective

The aim of this study was to examine the role of vital exhaustion in predicting the recurrence of vascular events.

Waving the Flag: National Symbolism,Social Identity,and Political Engagement*

This research examined the psychological underpinnings of concern for national symbols and ritualistic‐ceremonial activities or “symbolic involvement.” We propose and test a distinction between symbolic and “instrumental” involvement or concern for the functionality of national institutions and their capability to provide instrumental benefits to citizens. Items comprising the two constructs were found to be empirically distinct, evidenced by statistically reliable and orthogonal dimensions in exploratory factor analysis. Moreover, evidence based on divergent patterns of relations with various forms of national membership indicates that symbolic and instrumental involvement are rooted in distinct motivational concerns related to identity expression and object appraisal, respectively. These findings suggest that national symbolism evokes a psychological attachment to the nation as an abstracted social entity, but not as a concrete functional system.     

繁殖群中婴幼川金丝猴社会关系发展的个案研究

使用瞬时取样法,对繁殖笼内出生的两只婴幼川金丝猴进行连续22个月的行为记录。结果表明,川金丝猴婴猴断乳大约在19—20月龄;断乳表现为母婴之间矛盾冲突的过程;群内其他雌性对初生婴儿表现出明显的抢婴、护婴和育婴行为;父亲对婴幼猴表现出接纳和容忍的态度;婴儿在断乳前是群内全体成员保护和爱护的对象,以后开始进入社会关系网,受到成年个体的责备,但很轻微;雌性幼猴在32月龄时尚未被记录到对群内成员表现威胁、蜷缩和匍伏等行为模式。     

Facing ambiguity with action

An insurrection, threats to our election system, and widespread distrust have spurred a national conversation about civic engagement. Many people of faith are responding with a desire to take action. However, the path to action is often deeply ambiguous. How we choose to take action that counts. This article is a personal reflection on how political engagement can animate faith and faith can guide political engagement. It suggests constant reflection on the subtle ways we can be led into complacency or inaction when interacting with political institutions. By reflecting on these mechanisms and connecting with our faith communities, this article posits that people of faith can thoughtfully and boldly make the daily decisions that make up our civic engagement.     

Comparing Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians’ Religious and Political Beliefs Across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa

This article compares the political correlates of Renewalist Christianity in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa (N = 44,832). Renewalists include Pentecostals and Charismatic members of Mainline Protestant and Catholic churches. Though rarely studied comparatively, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa boast the largest Renewalist populations worldwide. Scholars have noted that the religious and political beliefs of Renewalists differ from other Christians, but existing studies either treat Renewalists as a single category or focus on Pentecostals while pooling Charismatic and non-Charismatic Catholics and Protestants as denominational blocks. Using multilevel mixed-effects models, this article first confirms that Renewalists’ religious and political beliefs differ from those of non-Renewalist Christians. Importantly, this cautions against the ubiquitous aggregation of Charismatic and non-Charismatic Catholics (and Protestants) in statistical analyses. Additionally, we theorize and evaluate differences between Renewalists and the role of regional context. Religious differences between Pentecostals and Charismatics, we show, are much larger in Latin America than in Sub-Saharan Africa.     

Empirical tests of scientific realism: A quantitative framework

The scientific realism debate in philosophy of science raises some intriguing methodological issues. Scientific realism posits a link between a scientific theory's observational and referential success. This opens the possibility of testing the thesis empirically, by searching for evidence of such a link in the record of theories put forward in the history of science. Many realist philosophers working today propose case study methodology as a way of carrying out such a test. This article argues that a qualitative method such as case study methodology is not adequate for this purpose, for two reasons: to test scientific realism is to pose an effects-of-causes question, and observational and referential success are quantities that theories possess to a greater or lesser degree. The article concludes that an empirical test of scientific realism requires a quantitative method.     

Personality and the Policy Positions of Politicians

Politicians’ support of or opposition to concrete policies is uniquely consequential for policymaking, public opinion, and a host of other societal outcomes. Explaining their policy positions is therefore a major research agenda in political science. Here, we evaluate the role of politicians’ personality traits, measured with the Big Five typology, in shaping how liberal or conservative their economic and social policy positions are. While existing research establishes this link among nonelites, it is far from obvious that the same holds for politicians, who have systematically different personality profiles, and whose positions are constrained by party lines. Using an in-person study of 893 legislators in five countries who completed personality questionnaires and provided detailed issue positions, we find that Openness to Experience is strongly and positively predictive of politicians’ liberal positions on both economic and social policies, but a null relationship for Conscientiousness. We also find that Extraversion predicts more conservative economic (but not social) policy positions. We discuss implications for the role of elites’ individual characteristics in policymaking.     

Political Extremism and a Generalized Propensity to Discriminate Among Values

Research exploring the psychological differences between people supporting extreme versus moderate ideologies is growing. However, this research has rarely examined the domain of values. Here, we explore this domain by assessing the possibility that political extremists discriminate more among values compared to moderates, namely, that extremists exhibit strong commitment toward some values at the expense of other values, whereas moderates would acknowledge a multiplicity of values as equally important. First, we propose a model positing that a value discriminability parameter captures a general tendency to discriminate among values. Second, we test empirically the prediction that, compared to moderates, political extremists exhibit a higher discriminability parameter. This prediction is supported by four studies (including one based on the European Social Survey where representative samples from 29 European countries are examined) where participants reported their ideological orientation and rated the importance of basic human values (we focused on basic values because these transcend the political domain, thus highlighting general effects). Specifically, in all studies we observed a positive correlation between political extremism and residual variability in ratings, a hallmark of a higher discriminability parameter. These findings highlight the value domain as critical to understanding differences between political extremists and moderates.     

Distrustful Complacency and the COVID-19 Vaccine: How Concern and Political Trust Interact to Affect Vaccine Hesitancy

We test the hypothesis that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is attributable to distrustful complacency—an interactive combination of low concern and low trust. Across two studies, 9,695 respondents from different parts of Britain reported their level of concern about COVID-19, trust in the UK government, and intention to accept or refuse the vaccine. Multilevel regression analysis, controlling for geographic area and relevant demographics, confirmed the predicted interactive effect of concern and trust. Across studies, respondents with both low trust and low concern were 10%–22% more vaccine hesitant than respondents with either high trust or high concern, and 26%–29% more hesitant than respondents with both high trust and high concern. Results hold equally among White, Black, and Muslim respondents, consistent with the view that regardless of mean-level differences, a common process underlies vaccine hesitancy, underlining the importance of tackling distrustful complacency both generally and specifically among unvaccinated individuals and populations.     

“Put a Little Love in Your Heart”: Acceptance of Paternalistic and Ally Political Discourses Both Predict Pro-Roma Solidarity Intentions Through Moral Inclusion

The way politicians talk about minorities institutes the normative context of intergroup relations. We investigated how endorsement of different political discourses predicts donation and collective action intentions by majority members toward the Roma in five European countries. The survey was conducted online using samples demographically similar to the populations of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, France, and Ireland (N = 5,054). First, results showed that accepting paternalistic discourse versus discourse promoting allyship were not distinguishable; both promoted higher moral inclusion which in turn predicted higher prosocial intentions. Second, donations (i.e., immediate relief) and collective action (i.e., social change action) were driven by identical factors. Third, acceptance of openly hostile political discourse neither predicted moral exclusion, nor lower prosocial intentions. In summary, our research provides important evidence that when it comes to Roma—non-Roma relations, the previously established distinction between solidarity intentions that aim to solidify status relations versus bring about social change is completely blurred, presumably because of the social context in which any positive message communicates moral inclusion challenging the hostile status quo.