Prejudice in interreligious context: The role of metaprejudice and majority–minority status

Samples of two hundred forty‐five majority Sunny Muslims, 87 Ahmadiyya Muslims, and 145 Christians were used to investigate the determinants and mediators of prejudice in interreligious context in Indonesia. First, the study extends the idea of in‐group and out‐group metaprejudice; both of which were found to mediate the relationship between perceived quality of intergroup relationship and personal prejudice. Second, we expected that majority members are more likely to reject a minority and that a minority is more likely to more strongly reject another minority than the majority for self‐serving reasons. Additionally, the Sunni majority will prejudice and reject the Ahmadiyya minority more than the Christian minority due to the strained religious relation between the two Muslim groups. The hypotheses were confirmed. The findings are discussed in the context of stereotyping, and prejudice dynamics in other intergroup conflicts and ways of coping with such conflict are suggested.     

Understanding the supporters and opponents of Myanmar's civil disobedience movement against the military coup in 2021

In February 2021, the Myanmar military carried out a coup d'etat, which was then followed by a wave of civil protests. The present study aims to understand the support among people from Southeast Asia (specifically Indonesia) for the people of Myanmar who are fighting against a military coup. The data were collected from Muslim participants (N = 209) and non-Muslim participants (N = 192) in Indonesia. The findings indicate that the perceived country's internal problems, support for human rights in Myanmar, and the perceived country's important position in Southeast Asia are among the strongest predictors of the intention to support collective movements in other countries. Considerably, lack of empathy and how the victim/disadvantaged groups are perceived, like whether they have a negative rapport in treating other groups, also play a key role in the endorsement of solidarity. It is suggested that the dynamic relationships between these factors need to be considered to find ways to foster humanitarian solidarity. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

An Exploratory Study Comparing Goal-Oriented Mental Imagery with Daily To-Do Lists: Supporting College Student Success

Although to-do lists are a ubiquitous daily planning tool there is limited information on users’ perceptions of this method. Another resource to support goal-oriented planning is mental imagery. A substantial body of research shows the utility of mental imagery in the domains of healthcare, sports, business and education. Imagery has been shown to enhance goal-oriented behavior, and along with primed positive affect, to enhance persistence and coping. For the purpose of comparison, a sample of 214 college students practiced either a goal-oriented mental imagery technique or a to-do list technique on alternate days for two weeks. On mental imagery days students were significantly more likely to report a sense of accomplishment, ease, coping, and positive affect, compared with to-do list days. Qualitative comments provided additional informative detail showing to-do list days to be associated with a task orientation, greater dissatisfaction with underachievement, and higher levels of perceived stress and negative affect. While the study shows benefit for both mental imagery and to-do lists, a tenable conclusion from the results is that a combination of the two methods may actually yield the greatest benefit. Used in tandem the methods provide a synergistic orientation to daily tasks with a heightened sense of positive affect and expectancy.     

Virtual reality as an immersive projective and autodriving advancement technique

The COVID-19 lockdown posed challenges for traditional qualitative researchers, as well as opportunities for innovative qualitative research. While online interviews and focus groups via video conferencing platforms were the most widely used methods, Zoom Fatigue also occurred, hampering some participants' experiences and eventually impacting data quality. Incorporating virtual reality (VR) was one possible solution. This study explores the experiences and involvement of family participants in a qualitative research study using VR during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The research aims to assess the impact of VR on data quantity and quality, as well as the depth of insights compared to traditional methods without VR. The study employs VR roleplay and autodriving methods to elicit family participant engagement. The findings suggest that the application of VR in autodriving improves data quality and quantity while also making the research process more enjoyable for participating parents and children. The results indicate that VR holds significant potential for advancing qualitative research methodology, especially for previously underrepresented groups such as children.     

Identity,representations, religion,and apologizing for past wrongdoings: Muslim discourse about Indonesia's 1965–66 massacres of communists

Since 1965, in Indonesia, people labelled as communists and their descendants have been mistreated. Recently, there has been an issue to apologize to them, but up until now, no official apology has been offered by the Indonesian government. The present study aims to understand how communism is perceived in Indonesia and why communism attributes labelled to a person can lead to negative effects, such as social exclusions. We interviewed 23 Muslims living in Jakarta (i.e., majority group) and used a thematic analysis to organize and describe the data. We found that Muslims who see communists as non‐believers view communist members as dangerous and a threat for the unity of the Republic of Indonesia. Among participants with such beliefs, the past maltreatments to accused communists are justified and legitimate; any apology toward the victims is considered not needed. The findings are discussed in the context of collective blaming and group essentialization, and ways to solve the problems are suggested.     

European and American WAIS IV norms: Cross‐national differences in perceptual reasoning,processing speed and working memory subtest scores

International comparisons of IQ test norms show differences between nations. In the present study, nonverbal reasoning, processing speed and working memory subtest scores of the US, German, French, Finnish, and Scandinavian (combined Swedish‐Norwegian‐Danish sample) WAIS IV standardization samples were compared. The European samples had higher scores on the reasoning subtests compared to the American sample, corroborating earlier studies. The Finnish and Scandinavian samples had lower processing speed and working memory scores than the American, German, and French samples. Mechanisms that may underlie the observed national IQ profiles include: (1) test‐taking attitudes—in tests that require balancing speed and accuracy of performance Americans may prioritize fast performance while Europeans avoid mistakes; (2) differences between languages in digit articulation times; and (3) educational factors—the European advantage on reasoning subtests may be based on there being better educational systems in Europe as compared to the US.     

No grammatical gender effect on affective ratings: evidence from Italian and German languages

In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants’ demographic characteristics (such as, the raters’ age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words). Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an overt coding of word grammar is not required. Although further research is recommended to refine the impact of the grammatical gender on properties of semantic representation, these results have implications for any strong view of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.