List of Contributors

Authors Index

List of Contributors     

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.     

Living under threat: Mutual threat perception drives anti‐Muslim and anti‐Western hostility in the age of terrorism

This research demonstrates a common psychology of outgroup hostility driven by perceived intergroup threat among three groups and seven cultural contexts: non‐Muslim Westerners, Muslims in Western societies, and Muslims in the Middle East. In Study 1, symbolic, but not realistic and terroristic threats, predicted non‐Muslim Norwegians' intentions to join anti‐Islamic movements. In Study 2, symbolic and realistic, but not terroristic threat, predicted non‐Muslim Americans' willingness to persecute Muslims. In Studies 3 and 4, symbolic threat predicted support and behavioral intentions against the West among Swedish and Turkish Muslims. Finally, in Study 5, a comparison demonstrated that symbolic and realistic threats had the same effects on violent intentions among non‐Muslim and Muslim Danes, and Muslims in Afghanistan. Meta‐analysis showed that symbolic threat was most strongly associated with intergroup hostility. Across studies, participants with high religious group identification experienced higher levels of threat. Implications for intergroup research and prejudice reduction are discussed.     

Snapshots from therapy: Exploring operationalisations and ways of studying flashbulb memories for private events

A total of 13 clients (10 women and 3 men, mean age 32.85 years, SD 10.50) were interviewed after finishing group therapy, and 7 were re-interviewed 4-5 months later. The clients recounted all the specific episodes they remembered from the therapy. The memories were classified as flashbulb memories or non-flashbulb memories according to two different criteria: consistency and phenomenological clarity. Clients had flashbulb memories from therapy according to both operationalisations. Flashbulb memories according to a phenomenology-based operationalisation referred to more unusual episodes and more often to episodes associated with insight than non-flashbulb memories. The consistency operationalisation did not differentiate between flashbulb and non-flashbulb memories with respect to characteristics of the remembered events. Number of remembered episodes was positively related to the subjective evaluation of the therapy.     

Religiosity of young adults: does childhood maltreatment make a difference?

Previous research on the association between maltreatment in childhood and later religious beliefs and behaviours suggests that maltreatment may have either negative or positive influences on religiosity. However, methodological limitations of previous studies may limit their generalisability. The present study attempted to address these limitations. We examined associations between childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and several dimensions of adult religiosity in a large sample of college students (N = 763). Associations between child maltreatment and religiosity were weak (rs ≤ 0.09). After controlling for possible demographic confounds, the only significant association was between childhood emotional abuse and religious questing.     

From Compassion to Obedience: Gender and Emotion in Two Danish Prayer Books

Drawing from recent scholarship on prayer, identity formation and the history and sociology of emotion, this article explores the intersection of gender and emotion in two Danish prayer books dating from before and after the Lutheran Reformation in 1536. It is argued that the introduction of Lutheranism in Denmark resulted in a more strictly gendered understanding of family prayer. In this, the social and emotional ideal of obedience to paternal authority came to eclipse the expression of compassion with the suffering Christ that was a characteristic feature of late-medieval prayer.     

Fear Extinction to an Out-Group Face: The Role of Target Gender

ABSTRACT— Conditioning studies on humans and other primates show that fear responses acquired toward danger-relevant stimuli, such as snakes, resist extinction, whereas responses toward danger-irrelevant stimuli, such as birds, are more readily extinguished. Similar evolved biases may extend to human groups, as recent research demonstrates that a conditioned fear response to faces of persons of a social out-group resists extinction, whereas fear toward a social in-group is more readily extinguished. Here, we provide an important extension to previous work by demonstrating that this fear-extinction bias occurs solely when the exemplars are male. These results underscore the importance of considering how gender of the target stimulus affects psychological and physiological responses to out-group threat.     

The effectiveness of the erratum in avoiding error propagation in physics

The propagation of errors in physics research is studied, with particular attention being paid to the effectiveness of the erratum in avoiding error propagation. We study the citation history of 17 physics papers which have significant errata associated with them. It would appear that the existence of an erratum does not significantly decrease the frequency with which a paper is cited and in most cases the erratum isnot cited along with the original paper. The authors comment on implications for the responsibilities of authors.