When Good Consumers Turn Bad: Psychological Contract Breach in Committed Brand Relationships

To better understand the conditions under which committed consumers continue to support their preferred brand after a transgression versus turn against the brand and the underlying theoretical process, we study the interplay between brand commitment and specific types of transgressions. Across three scenario‐based and field studies, we show that consumers have psychological contracts with brands, which dictate the terms of the relationship, and for committed consumers, violations of any aspect in (out of) the contract results in a negative (indifferent) response. Furthermore, we demonstrate that consumer trust is the underlying mechanism: committed consumers exhibit more negative responses to in‐contract transgressions as a result of their lower trust in the brand.     

“How can you make friends if you don't know who you are?” A qualitative examination of international students' experience informed by the Social Identity Model of Identity Change

This paper explores the contribution of social identity change to international students' health and well‐being. International students typically face a range of challenges from the time they leave their home country, including the need to adapt both to a new culture and norms and to a new educational landscape. Previous research informed by the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) suggests that during such life transitions, an individual's group memberships and associated social identities can provide a buffer against the threats to well‐being that such transitions present. To examine the relevance of SIMIC for the transitions that international students' experience, semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 international students attending an Australian university. Thematic analysis provided support for the relevance of SIMIC's social identity gain and social identity maintenance pathways in the transition and revealed a number of associated factors that acted as either facilitators (e.g., a host family that supported community integration) or barriers (e.g., experiencing culture shock) to social identity change. These findings present the first qualitative support for SIMIC within an international student population and help to flesh out the specific ways in which social identity processes contribute to both positive and negative health and well‐being outcomes.     

Emotional reactivity to daily events in youth with anxiety disorders

Background: Although research supports associations between anxiety and emotional reactivity in adults (Cisler, J. M., Olatunji, B. O., Feldner, M. T., &; Forsyth, J. P. (2010). Emotion regulation and the anxiety disorders: an integrative review. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 32(1), 68–82.), few studies have examined emotional reactivity in anxious youth (e.g., Carthy et al., 2010; Tan, P. Z., Forbes, E. E., Dahl, R. E., Ryan, N. D., Siegle, G. J., Ladouceur, C. D., &; Silk, J. S. (2012). Emotional reactivity and regulation in anxious and nonanxious youth: a cell-phone ecological momentary assessment study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 53(2), 197–206.). Methods: Using daily diary methodology, this study examined both negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) reactivity to daily events in youth diagnosed with anxiety (N?=?68; 60% female; 78% non-Hispanic White; M age?=?11.18 years, SD?=?3.17). We also examined whether parent-reported emotion regulation would predict emotional reactivity. Results: Participants reported more NA on days they experienced more negative parent and teacher events and less PA on days that they experienced more negative peer events. Additionally, better emotion regulation was associated with less NA reactivity to negative teacher events and to both negative and positive academic events. Conclusions: Interpersonal events have a salient effect on daily affect for anxious youth. Youth anxiety therapists should target emotion regulation associated with negative events involving adults and address barriers to developing and maintaining positive peer relationships.     

Attentional biases to threat in social anxiety disorder: time to focus our attention elsewhere?

Background: Cognitive models propose that attentional biases to threat contribute to the maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, the specific characteristics of such biases are still object to debate.

Objectives: The current study aimed to disentangle effects of trait and state social anxiety on attention allocation towards social stimuli.

Methods: Participants with SAD (n?=?67) and healthy controls (n?=?62) completed three visual search tasks while their eye movements were recorded. Half of the participants in each group were randomly assigned to a state anxiety induction.

Results: Contrary to our predictions, neither trait nor state social anxiety was associated with a facilitated attention to or a delayed disengagement from threat. However, participants with SAD did show reduced fixation durations for threatening stimuli, indicating an avoidance of threat. Induction of state anxiety led to an increased distractibility by threat.

Conclusions: We suggest that attention allocation in SAD is characterized by an avoidant rather than a vigilant attentional bias. Accordingly, our results contradict previous results that associate SAD with facilitated attention to threat and existing approaches to modify attentional biases, that aim to decrease attention towards threatening stimuli.     

“Je suis en terrasse”: Political Violence,Civilizational Politics,and the Everyday Courage to Be

Following the attacks against the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the subsequent acts of political violence in Paris the following November, a number of memes spread swiftly across social media. Most notable of these were proclamations of “Je suis Charlie,” “Je suis Paris,” “Je suis en terrasse,” and tricolorizing one's Facebook profile page. Although there are various ways by which this phenomenon might be explained, this article argues that, at least for some people, they seem to have operated as key mechanisms by which individuals/society sought to reestablish what Tillich calls “the courage to be,” and which in more contemporary terminology might be labeled a sense of ontological security—the ability to go on in the face of what would otherwise be debilitating anxieties of existential dread. The article argues the memes did this through a number of mechanisms. These included establishing a sense of vicarious identification with the victims; embracing increased levels of danger and seeking to confront the question of mortality head on; reasserting a sense of community and home via the reinstantiation of everyday routines now ascribed with enhanced political and existential significance; and reaffirming a new civilizationally inflected self‐narrative.     

The Mistreatment of My People: Victimization by Proxy and Behavioral Intentions to Commit Violence Among Muslims in Denmark

Islamist extremism is often explained by the suffering endured by Muslims in Islamic countries as a result of Western‐led wars. However, many terrorist attacks have been carried out by European Muslims with no personal experiences of war. Across two studies among Danish Muslims, we tested if what we call “victimization‐by‐proxy processes” motivate behavioral intentions to commit acts of violence. We used Muslim identification, perceived injustice of Western foreign policies, and group‐based anger to predict violent and nonviolent behavioral intentions. More importantly, we compared path models of Danish Muslims from conflict zones with those without direct personal experience of Western‐led occupation. We found similar effects among the participants in each category, that is, vicarious psychological responses mimicked those of personally experienced adversity. In fact, participants born in Western Europe were, on average, more strongly identified with Muslims, more likely to perceive Western foreign policy as more unjust, reported greater group‐based anger, and were more inclined to help Muslims both by nonviolent and violent means.     

Becoming Eastern Orthodox in diaspora: materializing Orthodox Russia and Holy Rus’

In this article, I draw on interviews and participant observation data from a two-year-long ethnographic study in a Russian Orthodox parish in the United States. I argue that both the Russian Orthodox immigrants and the Protestant converts to Orthodoxy attending this parish may be usefully thought of as diasporic groups. Seeking to construct their particular Orthodox identity, both groups deal with their own physical and symbolic displacements, and attempt to find their place of belonging. I demonstrate how in the process, through reliance on religious narratives, prayer, and Russian Orthodox icons, parishioners construct two overlapping, yet distinctive places of their origin: Holy Rus’ and Orthodox Russia. Finally, attending to how some Orthodox Christians were able to position themselves in two groups simultaneously, I suggest that we think of religious practitioners as able to inhabit two diasporas at once.