Who lives,who dies,who decides: Differences between mass public shooters who survive,are killed,and commit suicide

This study provides an in-depth analysis of American mass public shooting conclusions between 1966 and 2017. Specifically, this work examines differences in factors contributing to the perpetrator's likelihood of surviving, being killed, and committing suicide. Ten hypotheses, rooted in previous homicide, suicide, homicide-suicide, and mass public shooting literature consider different psychological, situational, and background factors shaping the outcome of mass public shootings. Significant findings indicate factors influencing perpetrators' suicide include suicidal ideation, higher victim counts, and suicide copycat effects. Factors influencing perpetrators being killed similarly include higher victim counts, the arrival of law enforcement, lethal/non-lethal resistance, and government targets. This investigation provides practical implications for practitioners and policymakers, especially law enforcement and mental health practitioners, seeking to develop intervention and prevention strategies for addressing suicidal ideation and its most lethal outcome: mass public shootings.     

Truth and consequences

In his 1987 paper “Truth or Consequences,” Dan Brock describes a deep conflict between the goals and virtues of philosophical scholarship and public policymaking: whereas the former is concerned with the search for truth, the latter must primarily be concerned with promoting good consequences. When philosophers are engaged in policymaking, he argues, they must shift their primary goal from truth to consequences—but this has both moral and methodological costs. Brock’s argument exemplifies a pessimistic, but not uncommon, view of the possible shape and nature of applied philosophy. The present paper paints a richer and more optimistic picture. It argues that the difference between theoretical philosophy and applied philosophy is not best understood as a choice between truth and consequences. On the contrary, applied philosophers engage in forms of truth-seeking that are properly concerned with consequences—including the consequences of philosophical practice itself.     

The relationship of environmental concern with public and private pro-environmental behaviours: A pre-registered meta-analysis

Previous meta-analyses identified a gap between environmental concern and pro-environmental behaviours. However, the failure to differentiate these behaviours and the influence of contextual factors may limit understanding of the gap. This pre-registered meta-analysis evaluated the magnitudes of the correlations of environmental concern, as measured by the New Environmental Paradigm of thinking, with public and private pro-environmental behaviours and investigated the moderating roles of sociocultural contexts. Environmental concern was found positively correlated with public pro-environmental behaviour (k = 10, N = 4636; r = 0.27) and private pro-environmental behaviour (k = 31, N = 20,907; r = 0.35). These two pooled correlations did not differ significantly. Institutionalization of environmental protection did not moderate these correlations, while cultural factors, including individualism, long-term orientation, and external control, did. These findings maintain the utility of environmental concern in facilitating different pro-environmental behaviours and highlight the lack of research attention on public pro-environmental behaviour.     

Does System Justification Promote Establishment Voting? Mainstream Politics in France,Germany, and the United Kingdom

Throughout Europe and North America, mainstream political parties have ceded electoral support to antiestablishment parties from the far left and far right. We investigate the hypothesis that individual differences in system justification—the psychological tendency to defend and justify the overarching social system—would be negatively associated with antiestablishment voting, even among citizens who would otherwise be inclined to support radicalism. In three large, nationally representative surveys conducted in France (N = 14,432), Germany (N = 1,168), and the United Kingdom (N = 2,337), we observed that system justification was positively associated with voting for establishment parties and negatively associated with antiestablishment voting. System justification was associated with reduced support for antiestablishment parties on the right and left—even among respondents who were high on ethnic intolerance, opposition to the European Union, economic distress, and support for income redistribution. Thus, all other things being equal, system-justification tendencies reinforce political moderation, establishment voting, and therefore social stability.     

Forum: Teaching With,Against, and To Faith

These three articles deal with the issue of faith in the classroom – whether one should teach “to,” “for,” or “against” faith. While their institutional settings and experiences are different, the authors all contend that more serious reflection needs to be given to the matter of how religious commitment plays out in our diverse pedagogical settings. The initial article by Carolyn Medine surveys the current climate regarding student spirituality in the classroom, the broader governmental concerns, and, the tensions that inform the choices available to a professor. Todd Penner's essay analyzes faith‐as‐ideology in the undergraduate classroom, and Marjorie Lehman's contribution analyzes how the issue manifests differently in Jewish Studies.     

The Electoral Impact of Public Opinion on Religious Establishment

While previous work has examined the structure of public opinion on church and state, to date there has been little effort to connect public opinion on this group of issues to vote choice. I begin by hypothesizing that attitudes on religious establishment are distinct from attitudes on more often studied issues like abortion and gay marriage. Second, I argue that religious establishment meets the conditions for partisan voting: the parties and candidates have taken distinct, highly public stands on religious establishment, and the issue is highly salient among a certain segment of voters. Finally, I develop a theory that establishment attitudes should exert a greater impact among those individuals who feel that their values are threatened in contemporary society because such individuals may see religious accommodation as a means of returning to their understanding of traditional values. I test these hypotheses using data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, and I find considerable support for my argument.     

Online Reactions to the Muhammad Cartoons: YouTube and the Virtual Ummah

The publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands‐Posten on September 30, 2005, created a great deal of controversy over self‐censorship, freedom of speech, and accusations of religious incitement. Muslim activists organized protests, and later hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of others were injured due to violent reactions to the cartoons. This article focuses on how people used YouTube to react to these cartoons by analyzing 261 video clips and 4,153 comments. Results show that the majority of the video clips and comments were moderate and positive in tone toward Islam and Muhammad; however, a small percentage either called for jihad against the West or made lethal threats against the artist. Other comments carried curses or insults against Denmark, while a few others were anti‐Islamic. The fact that these online reactions were highly varied in tone suggests that the online public sphere is very much divided.     

Islam as moral education: madrasa courses and contestation of the secular in the Republic of Tatarstan,Russia

In this paper, based on fieldwork in a small town in post-Soviet Tatarstan, Russia, I explore the dynamics of religious life in a rural community, highlighting the ways religious and secular education interact with and reinforce each other, contributing to the processes of religious revival in this community. Soviet ideas and practices of moral education as well as post-Soviet concerns about morality constitute the common ground that brings secular and religious together. Adhering to the Soviet idea that society is responsible for the moral education of its young people, local schoolteachers use Islam as a source of moral values and disciplining practices to bring up the younger generation, affected by post-Soviet transformations. Teachers increasingly rely on Islamic ethics in the moral upbringing of schoolchildren that effectively challenges the separation between secular and religious education. Religion acquires growing significance as a process of moral edification and discipline.     

Police Attitudes in England to Return Interviews,in Repeat Missing Person Cases

The aim of this article is to examine the attitudes of English police officers to return interviews of people who are reported missing repeatedly (e.g. three times or more). In addition to a brief police ‘Safe & Well Check’ a return interview is also carried out by a police officer and seeks to find out where people went and why, in order to identify potential risks to their safety and whether they experienced harm whilst they were missing. A mixed‐methods survey of 50 constables from one police force in England ran in March 2014, using quantitative and open qualitative questions. Key themes that emerged were individual frustration at repetition, negativity around usefulness of the interviews, a challenge to involve third sector partners, and development areas in training. Statistical significance was found in variables relating to officer experience and gender, against views on interviewing missing people. The article looks at the limited existing literature and makes recommendations about best practice with return interviews, advocating a multi‐agency approach to improve interventions, and better training to improve positivity towards missing people. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Kind of Christian Are You? Religious Ideologies and Political Attitudes

Through measures of orthodoxy, images of God, and instrumental beliefs, scholars of the social scientific study of religion have been able to demonstrate how abstract and specific religious beliefs influence political and social attitudes. Building upon this work, this article uses a unique data set to measure social and prosperity gospel support. Further, it examines the roots and political behavioral consequences of support to these religious ideologies. The results show that religious tradition, congregational messages, and social demographics all influence doctrinal support. However, these relationships are conditional upon race. The results also show that the social gospel promotes an emphasis on the structural sources of social problems and the importance of rehabilitation, which leads to higher levels of self‐expressed liberalism and democratic identification. Conversely, the prosperity gospel promotes holding individuals accountable for social problems and punishing deviant behavior, which leads to higher levels of self‐expressed conservatism and Republican identification. The data also suggest that race matters, as the relationship between prosperity gospel support and political attitudes is more powerful for blacks than whites.