Dating during the time of COVID-19: Risk perceptions and political ideology

This study examined predictors of single people's beliefs about COVID prevention behaviors, intentions to engage in COVID prevention behaviors while dating, and actual dating behavior during the pandemic. Results revealed that single participants engaged in “riskier” dating behaviors (i.e., in-person unmasked) more frequently than “safer” dating behaviors (i.e., remote, or in-person masked/distanced). Individuals who perceived greater (vs. lesser) risk associated with COVID more strongly endorsed beliefs about social distancing (self and other) and were more likely to personally (or request others) engage in COVID prevention behaviors while dating. However, perceived risk did not predict actual dating behaviors. Conservatives (vs. liberals) less strongly endorsed beliefs about social distancing (for others, but not the self) and were less likely to personally (or request others) engage in COVID prevention behaviors while dating. Conservatives also reported meeting potential romantic partners more frequently than liberals. However, political ideology did not predict actual dating behaviors. Results suggest there is a disconnect between college students' beliefs/intentions and their actual dating behavior. These results demonstrate the importance of developing public health interventions that take into account the disconnect between college students' health-related intentions and actual behaviors, particularly in the context of dating.     

The Political Psychology of Contemporary Anti-Politics: A Discursive Approach to the End-of-Ideology Era

This article advocates a discursive approach for examining political rhetoric. Such an approach is particularly useful for studying contemporary political ideology. The current political climate, especially in Britain, has been described as exemplifying a "Third Way," which is said to have replaced the old ideological division between "left" and "right" by a consensual, non-ideological politics. TThe discursive approach allow the analyst to look at the continuing dilemmas of an ideology that denies its ideological character. In discursive analyses of interviews with 20 elected local officials in the Midlands of England, the respondents (regardless of party affiliation) tended to give accounts that celebrated the development of consensual, less ideologically divisive politics. These accounts, however, were dilemmatic: As the speakers told of social change, they also stressed their own personal stability, as if they themselves existed outside the previous political climate. They also explicitly distanced themselves from the language of "left" and "right," but in this distancing a further ideological dilemma was detectable. All the local politicians were officially affiliated to a political party. In discursively subtle ways, the speakers used the left/right continuum as they distinguished between the parties, thereby showing the sort of variability that discursive theorists have noted in other contexts. The implications of such findings and of the discursive approach to studying ideology are discussed in relation to the possibilities for developing a critical political psychology.     

Are Conservatives Really More Simple‐Minded than Liberals? The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking

Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only small adjustments to a popularly used dogmatism scale, results show that liberals can be significantly more dogmatic if a liberal domain is made salient. Studies 2–4 involve the domain specificity of integrative complexity. A large number of open‐ended responses from college students (Studies 2 and 3) and candidates in the 2004 Presidential election (Study 4) across an array of topic domains reveals little or no main effect of political ideology on integrative complexity, but rather topic domain by ideology interactions. Liberals are higher in complexity on some topics, but conservatives are higher on others. Overall, this large dataset calls into question the typical interpretation that conservatives are less complex than liberals in a domain‐general way.     

Gender as an Obstacle in HIV/AIDS Prevention: Considerations for the Development of HIV/AIDS Prevention Efforts for Male-to-Female Transgenders

SUMMARY

Social discourses regarding gender are responsible for molding people's cognitions, perceptions, behaviors, and interactions with others. Approaching and understanding gender socialization is an important strategy that must be included in the development of HIV/AIDS prevention intervention efforts targeting male-to-female (MTF) transgender people.

This paper represents an effort to identify the influence of gender construction among a group of MTF transgenders in Puerto Rico. Using combined methodology, authors examined results from a questionnaire and in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of MTF transgenders living in the San Juan metropolitan area.

Quantitative analysis demonstrated that this sample is composed of young, unemployed, and undereducated population. Many participated in the sex industry. Participants reported need for basic health and social services and alienation from social networks. Qualitative analysis confirmed their traditional social construction of the “feminine.” Their discourse underlines their need to reinforce their identity by the construction of a female self which undermines their possibilities for negotiating safer sex, as happens to most females in Latino societies.

Social vulnerability, institutional exclusion, and gender construction issues are obstacles for the HIV prevention efforts among these communities.     

Social influence on physics and mathematics: local or attributive?

Summary  The article is devoted to the nature of science. To what extent are science and mathematics affected by the society in which they are developed? Philosophy of science has accepted the social influence on science, but limits it only to the context of discovery (a “locational” approach). An opposite “attributive” approach states that any part of science may be so influenced. L. Graham is sure that even the mathematical equations at the core of fundamental physical theories may display social attributes. He has used the investigations of the famous Soviet physicist V. Fock on the General Theory of Relativity which were under the influence of Marxism. The Goal of the article is to demonstrate: 1) Why Soviet science is not an appropriate subject-matter for testing the thesis of social constructivism, 2) That differnt levels of science and different stages in the development of science undergo social influences in different degrees ranging from very significant and unavoidable to absolutely trivial and easy eliminated.     

Are Christian politics possible? A Kierkegaardian perspective

This paper provides a rereading of Søren Kierkegaard's attack upon Christendom in light of his theory of spheres of existence to examine whether Christian politics are possible after Kierkegaard. Talking of Christian politics makes sense only in the esthetic and the religious spheres of existence. However, Kierkegaard argues that politics worthy of the title Christian are impossible. Either such politics are simply Christendom far removed from New Testament Christianity, or Christian politics are faced with the paradox of existing before God and cannot proceed.     

Social dominance and anti-immigrant prejudice: A cross-national and prospective test of the mediating role of assimilation,multiculturalism, colour blindness,and interculturalism

Decades of research have shown that social dominance orientation (SDO) is one of the most important predictors of anti-immigrant attitudes. However, the mechanisms through which SDO can explain prejudice have been studied insufficiently. Using rich and diverse samples from France and from the province of Québec in Canada, the present research provides a cross-national (N = 1,852) and prospective (N = 534) analysis of a theoretical model in which the dimensions of SDO are indirectly predicting anti-immigrant prejudice via the intergroup ideologies of assimilation, multiculturalism, colour blindness and interculturalism. Results showed that interculturalism, a hierarchy-attenuating ideology was found to be a robust mechanism to explain the subtle effects of SDO-E on anti-immigrant prejudice whereas assimilation, a hierarchy-enhancing ideology was playing a more important role to explain direct and blatant effects of SDO-D on prejudice. The two most studied diversity approaches, multiculturalism and colour blindness, were largely redundant once interculturalism was considered. This pattern occurred in both France and Québec hence, favouring the context-independent pathway.     

THE WEAK ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT

Abstract. The design argument for God's existence was critically assessed when in the growth of modern science the cognitive value of ideological categories was called into question. In recent discussions dealing with anthropic principles there has appeared a new version of the design argument, in which cosmic design is described without the use of ideological terms. The weak anthropic principle (WAP), a most critical version of all these principles, describes the fine-tuning of physical parameters necessary lo the genesis of carbon-based life. It defines no physical mechanisms of the observed coordination between physical parameters. If in a future unified physical theory such mechanisms are discovered, the weak anthropic principle should be replaced by the strong anthropic principle, which asserts the physical necessity of fine-tuning. Neither of the versions can be regarded as physically trivial unless one accepts strong assumptions of the existence of parallel universes. Consequently, a new version of the philosophical design argument can be developed on the basis of the weak anthropic principle.     

略论春秋战国时期齐国相任的人才思想

春秋战国时期,周王室衰微,各诸侯国为国家的发展和壮大,政体先后向中央集权方向演变,围绕着中央权力机构的系统分化和进一步完善,其人才体制出现了新的特点,重视“中央之人”的选任,尤重相的任置。本文试以春秋战国时期的齐国为例,来分析相任的人才理念的形成、贯彻及社会影响等。