Fear Appeals Revisited: Testing a Unique Anti-smoking Film

Past research has found that fear-arousing persuasive messages can significantly affect attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. In this study, participants in high and low threat conditions viewed appropriately edited versions of a unique fear appeal video used in the American Lung Association’s anti-smoking campaign, while control condition participants viewed no film. Threat condition participants expressed stronger anti-smoking behavioral intentions than did control condition participants. These results represent the first effectiveness test of this widely used film.     

‘It's gotten a bit old,charity’: Young adults in New Zealand talk about poverty,charitable giving and aid appeals

An extensive body of literature exists on the phenomena of poverty, charitable giving and the effectiveness of aid appeals. To date psychological research has predominantly focused on individualistic models to explain people's understandings of poverty and their charitable giving practices. Based upon a social constructionist epistemology, this study investigates how understandings of aid appeals, poverty and charitable giving are discursively produced and constructed in relation to one another through an analysis of New Zealand young adults' talk about these issues. Data were collected from three focus group discussions among pre‐existing friendship groups comprising three male and nine female students aged between 18 and 25. A brief video clip of aid appeals was used to stimulate discussion on poverty and charitable giving. Analysis of these discussions revealed three discursive themes relating to the aid appeals: local versus international need, emotional arousal and insufficient information. Drawing upon these themes the participants constructed poverty as relative or extreme, and largely explained by educational deficits. They constructed charitable giving as solicited through aid appeals, as compromised through immunity to such appeals, and as diminished through positionings of self‐help and self‐responsibility. These discursive constructions were drawn on by participants to legitimate their own non‐donor position. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

HIV/AIDS and immigrant Cape Verdean women: Contextualized perspectives of Cape Verdean community advocates

This research explored Cape Verdean community advocates’ understandings of the structural and social realities that contribute to the increased HIV/AIDS risk of Northeastern U.S.-based immigrant Cape Verdean women. A community perspective informed the analysis of the multi-layered contextual barriers that these advocates identified as limiting the effectiveness of individual-level HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention models. Qualitative content analysis of interviews with nine community advocates revealed several thematic clusters including challenges to (1) perceived institutional and community realities; (2) traditional gender relations; and, (3) traditional ways of thinking. These findings challenge universalist cognitive-behavioral change models of HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention and are critically discussed to better understand the complex realities faced by Cape Verdean immigrant women. A liberatory community psychology perspective framed the research process and contributed to reconceptualizing HIV/AIDS risk as a community problem that requires interventions not simply at the individual and relational levels, but also at the structural level.     

Racial Socialization Experiences and Symptoms of Depression among Black Youth

Ecological barriers like racism and discrimination can weigh heavily on the shifting emotions of adolescents. We investigated the relationship of racial socialization experiences to the depression symptoms of 160 Black adolescents, including lethargy, low self-esteem, cognitive difficulties, social introversion, irritability, guilt, pessimism, sad mood, instrumental helplessness, and overall depression. Cultural pride socialization was inversely related to adolescent reports of lethargy and low self-esteem while alertness to discrimination socialization was positively related to instrumental helplessness and gender differences were found. Multiple regression findings showed that racial socialization experiences add significantly more predictability of depression symptoms over and above gender, neighborhood risk and resources. Recommendations for the family, mental health professionals and for the development of culturally relevant social interventions are provided.     

Racial identity beliefs and academic achievement: does being black hold students back?

The examination of a student’s racial identity beliefs along with the extent to which being Black is a central part of his or her self-concept provides a novel, insightful approach to understanding the relationship between racial identity and academic achievement (Chavous et al., 2003,). Using Sellers et al. (1998a) Multi-dimensional Model of Black Identity (MMBI) as a framework, this study investigated racial centrality, public regard and private regard beliefs in relation to the grade point average of African–American high-school students. A total of 289 African–American students from a large urban district participated in this study. Cluster analyses conducted on the three subscales of the MMBI on separate samples of 9th and 12th grade students replicated three of four racial identity profile groups previously identified by Chavous et al. (2003). Additionally, among both 9th and 12th grade students, Alienated students achieved significantly higher grade point averages than did Idealized students.     

内隐刻板印象研究综述

内隐刻板印象是存在的,并且比较集中地体现在内隐种族刻板印象、内隐性别刻板印象等方面.在相关研究的基础上,逐渐形成了判断潜伏期测量、投射测量等有效捕捉和研究内隐刻板印象的间接测量方法.     

Sleep of Reason: critical reflections on performance arts-based research as psycho-social commentary in expressive arts therapy praxis

This arts-based case study is a critical reflection on how performance art can be used as psycho-social commentary. It is an attempt to amplify arts-based inquiry using critical understandings of diverse and inclusive meaning making in expressive arts praxis and psychology. It examines the use of performance art in the expressive arts to understand psycho-social proximity to and complicity in dehumanization and structural racism. This arts-based research exists in the intersections of culture, race, the arts, and social commentary with the goals of learning how it facilitates awareness of psycho-social justice and how current uncritical expressive arts and psychology praxis and practitioners can perpetuate structural racism and racial trauma. It asserts performance art can be utilized as a catalyst for psycho-social transformation in creative ways.