Sense of community improves community participation in Chinese residential communities: The mediating role of sense of community responsibility and prosocial tendencies

Community participation is essential for community development and enhancing quality of life. Several studies have focused on the relationship between sense of community (SOC) and community participation in organizational settings. Guided by the community experiences framework, this study aims to examine how a SOC improves community participation in Chinese residential communities. Moreover, the study aims to assess the mediating role of SOC responsibility (SOC-R) and prosocial tendencies in that relationship. A sample of 433 residents completed questionnaires regarding their SOC, sense of community responsibility, prosocial tendencies, and community participation. Using a linear regression model, we found that a SOC can positively predict the level of community participation. Mediation effect analysis revealed that a SOC-R mediated the relationship between SOC and community participation. In addition, prosocial tendencies mediated the association between the SOC and community participation. Using multiple mediation analysis, we found that SOC-R and prosocial tendencies mediated the link between a SOC and community participation in a sequential manner. The findings of this study complement existing research by uncovering the mechanism underlying the relationship between a SOC and community participation.     

The myth of regaining control: Ostracism increases superstitious tendencies

Whether and how interpersonal experiences predispose people to show superstitious tendencies have been largely unexamined by past studies. By adopting a multimethod approach, three studies tested (a) whether ostracism increases superstitious tendencies through thwarted perceived control, (b) whether the dispositional need for closure moderates the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies and (c) whether restoring ostracized people's thwarted control weakens their superstitious tendencies. The results revealed that ostracized participants had higher superstitious tendencies than nonostracized participants did (Studies 1–3). Moreover, thwarted control mediated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 2). In addition, the dispositional need for closure moderated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies, such that the effect was stronger among participants with a high need for closure (Studies 1–2). Finally, restoring ostracized participants' perceived control weakened the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 3). Altogether, these findings feature the essential role of thwarted perceived control in understanding the link between ostracism and superstitious tendencies and the implication of control restoration in weakening the link. They also highlight the importance of dispositional characteristics in moderating people's responses to superstitions following ostracism and related forms of interpersonal maltreatment.     

Assessment of weight and eating concerns in Norwegian adolescents

The aim of the present study was to test the properties of an instrument that assesses concerns about weight and eating without reference to dieting behavior. A short instrument, the Weight and Eating Concerns Inventory (WECI) was examined in a sample of 569 boys and 548 girls aged 11 to 15 years. Confirmatory factor analyses with LISREL showed a better fit with a version of the instrument that did not include a reference to dieting behavior, compared to a version that included such a reference. This was true for both boys and girls, irrespective of their age group. However, the results indicated that both versions should be used with caution for young boys. The internal consistency of the WECI (that is, the version without reference to dieting) was satisfactory, ranging from 0.78 to 0.86 for girls and from 0.68 to 0.73 for boys. The WECI correlated quite substantially with negative self-evaluations and depression for boys and girls in all the age groups assessed, suggesting that high scores on the WECI may indicate a problem that goes beyond worries or concerns, and should be taken seriously. In general, girls reported more of these concerns than boys, and the correlation between the WECI and dieting was stronger among girls compared to boys.     

Alcohol-related motivational tendencies in hazardous drinkers: assessing implicit response tendencies using the modified-IAT

This study examined the utility of an implicit measure of cognitive associations, the Implicit Association Test (IAT; ), to assess alcohol-related approach dispositions. Forty-seven hazardous drinkers completed a modified IAT procedure that assessed the relation between alcohol and behavioral categories (i.e., approach and avoid). Participants completed a series of individual difference measures before an alcohol cue exposure task in which they anticipated alcohol consumption. Results indicate that the modified IAT is associated with binge drinking episodes, perceived difficulty controlling alcohol use, and appetitive responses to alcohol cues. Findings are discussed in terms of the potential value of this measure to assess alcohol-related memory associations among those whose alcohol use puts them at risk for harm.     

Learning of letter names and sounds and their contribution to word recognition

This study investigated knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, their learning, and their contributions to word recognition. Of 123 preschoolers examined on letter knowledge, 65 underwent training on both letter names and letter sounds in a counterbalanced order. Prior to training, children were more advanced in associating letters with their names than with their sounds and could provide the sound of a letter only if they could name it. However, children learned more easily to associate letters with sounds than with names. Training just on names improved performance on sounds, but the sounds produced were extended (CV) rather than phonemic. Learning sounds facilitated later learning of the same letters' names, but not vice versa. Training either on names or on sounds improved word recognition and explanation of printed words. Results are discussed with reference to cognitive and societal factors affecting letter knowledge acquisition, features of the Hebrew alphabet and orthography, and educational implications.     

Emotional and behavioural reactions to moral transgressions: cross-cultural and individual variations in India and Britain

Reactions to moral transgressions are subject to influence at both the cultural and individual levels. Transgressions against an individual's rights or against social conventions of hierarchy may elicit different reactions in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. In the current study, affective and behavioural reactions to transgressions of autonomy (rights) and community (hierarchy) were examined in India and Britain. Results revealed that although reactions to autonomy transgressions are similar in India and Britain, Indian participants express more moral outrage than do Britons in response to transgressions of community. Results also supported the contention of emotion‐specificity in affective moral reaction: Participants in both India and Britain reported anger in response to autonomy transgressions, but contempt in response to violations of community. Importantly, these results extend previous research by demonstrating the importance of emotion specificity in moral reactions, as opposed to categorization or dilemma resolution. In addition, an individual difference measure of respect for persons was shown to moderate reactions to moral transgressions. Specifically, participants with high respect for persons were less negative to violators of the community ethic, but not the autonomy ethic. These findings highlight the importance of examining emotion‐specific responses in the moral domain and introduce a significant individual difference variable, respect for persons, into the psychology of morality.     

Whiteheadian Societies and Peirce's Law of Mind: Actuality and Potentiality in the Cosmic Process

Abstract

A more suitable philosophical position to counter the claims of scientific materialism re the nature of physical reality can possibly be found in combining the metaphysics of A.N. Whitehead and C.S. Peirce. Peirce postulated a habit-forming tendency or inbuilt potentiality of the cosmic process as a whole to move over time toward ever greater organization and more complex structure. But he is vague on how “the law of the mind” applies to nature below the level of human self-awareness. Whitehead's notion of actual entities (momentary self-constituting subjects of experience) as the “final real things of which the world is made up” logically allows for some primitive form of subjectivity with the requisite potentiality for habit-formation at all levels of existence and activity within nature. In addition, Whitehead's notion of structured societies made up of subsocieties with a “regnant” subsociety seems philosophically to justify the new emphasis on bottom-up rather than top-down causation in the emergence of more complex levels of existence and activity within the life-sciences.     

Birth Order Position and Prosocial Tendencies

This study investigated the relationship between psychological birth order position and different types and levels of prosocial tendencies. An ex postfacto, between-family research design was used. Data on prosocial tendencies were obtained from 888 college students (females = 80.4%, mean age = 20.94 yrs, SD = 2.83; males = 19.6%, mean age = 21.62 yrs, SD = 2.44). Participants completed a biographical questionnaire as well as the Prosocial Tendencies Measure (Carlo & Randall, 2002). Data were analysed to compare and contrast prosocial tendencies between demographics using parametric ANOVAs, t tests and the Mann-Whitney Test. Significant differences in prosocial tendency scores were only found between middle-borns and last-borns on altruism, with middle-borns scoring significantly higher in prosocial tendencies than last-borns. There is no evidence to suggest that a definitive link between prosocial tendencies and birth order exists in this study.     

Dissociative tendencies and right-hemisphere processing load: effects on vigilance performance

The present study was designed to explore the relationship between self-reported dissociative experiences and performance in tasks eliciting right-hemisphere processing load. Thirty-four participants (10 men and 24 women) performed a vigilance task in two conditions: with task-irrelevant negative-arousing pictures and task-irrelevant neutral pictures. Dissociation was assessed with the Dissociative Experience Scale. Consistent with theories positing right-hemisphere deregulation in high non-clinical dissociators, dissociative experiences correlated with greater vigilance decrement only in the negative picture condition. As both the vigilance task and negative picture processing are right lateralized, this result provides support for a right-hemisphere dysfunction in high dissociators, at least in negative conditions.     

The co-occurrence of multisensory competition and facilitation

Previous studies of multisensory integration have often stressed the beneficial effects that may arise when information concerning an event arrives via different sensory modalities at the same time, as, for example, exemplified by research on the redundant target effect (RTE). By contrast, studies of the Colavita visual dominance effect (e.g., [Colavita, F. B. (1974). Human sensory dominance. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 409–412]) highlight the inhibitory consequences of the competition between signals presented simultaneously in different sensory modalities instead. Although both the RTE and the Colavita effect are thought to occur at early sensory levels and the stimulus conditions under which they are typically observed are very similar, the interplay between these two opposing behavioural phenomena (facilitation vs. competition) has yet to be addressed empirically. We hypothesized that the dissociation may reflect two of the fundamentally different ways in which humans can perceive concurrent auditory and visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated both multisensory facilitation (RTE) and the Colavita visual dominance effect using exactly the same audiovisual displays, by simply changing the task from a speeded detection task to a speeded modality discrimination task. Meanwhile, in Experiment 2, the participants exhibited multisensory facilitation when responding to visual targets and multisensory inhibition when responding to auditory targets while keeping the task constant. These results therefore indicate that both multisensory facilitation and inhibition can be demonstrated in reaction to the same bimodal event.