Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy最新文献

This article aims to investigate how religious coping can help religious believers overcome mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. An integrative review was conducted by searching databases (PubMed/Medline, Springer, Elsevier, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO and Google Scholar) between 2020 and 2021 for articles using the following keywords: “Religious coping and COVID-19,” “Religion, mental health, and COVID-19,” and “Religiosity, spirituality, and COVID-19.” A total of twenty articles were selected for review. The result shows that religious faith might help individuals to calm their minds in times of crisis and severe illness. Some of the spiritual approaches suggested to combat COVID-19 might be effective. Positive religious coping, intrinsic religiousness, and faith in God were associated with lower anxiety and a greater positive outcome, whereas negative religious coping and distrust in God resulted in the opposite.

Surveys, commonly employed in the social and behavioral sciences, are practical tools that can be used to assess the needs and attitudes of a given population. If not implemented in thoughtful ways, however, surveys can be inefficient or even harmful. With surveys often informing critical policy decisions, survey administrators must make careful methodological choices in order to obtain meaningful results and make sound decisions. In this paper, we review the social scientific literature on survey administration to aid policymakers, practitioners, and other survey administrators in understanding their position, identifying their participants, and establishing a plan for their surveys. We provide an overarching framework for survey design, guided by the idea that surveys are conversations between administrators and participants, in order to help creators of surveys make better decisions and engage more effectively with the communities they serve.

Contemporary United States society is marked by exacerbated economic inequity and deep sociopolitical polarization, which increases a sense of precarity among marginalized communities. There is growing need to develop and foster practices that promote care and justice for marginalized communities. Organizational settings designed with the intent of supporting marginalized communities may possess unique knowledge related to actualizing care and promoting justice. Through analysis of ethnographic field notes and qualitative interviews conducted with 22 participants at the organization, this study examines organizational policies and practices of everyday decision-making at a drop-in center for women and gender non-conforming people in Washington State, USA. Findings document how policies and practices at the center promote care and justice for diverse marginalized groups. Implications for promoting equitable values in social settings more broadly are discussed.

This study tested the effect of normatively-focused scientific consensus messages (NFSCMs) on receivers' intention to consume GE-foods. In Study 1, the efficacy of a NFSCM was examined, relative to a standard descriptive norm message (SDNM), a scientific consensus message (SCM), and two control messages, issue-relevant and issue-irrelevant messages, using an experiment. In Study 2, the effect of the NFSCM with discrete descriptive norm formats was tested, relative to a standard message used in the real world, using an experiment. Results indicated that the effect of exposure to the NFSCM on intention was mediated via attentional focus on the norm information and perceptions about the norm, which is consistent with those in prior literature. The re-specified model was not contingent on participants’ education level, gender and political stance indicating a uniform effect. Exposure to the messages also changed receivers’ feeling of disgust and un/certainty about the scientific issue in desirable ways.

Rape myths are stereotypical beliefs that excuse the rapist and hold the victim responsible for rape, leading to secondary victimization. This study attempts to grasp the nature of rape myths in the Indian context and compares them with rape myths that appear in the literature. Detailed semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the general public (shopkeepers, clerks, students, counselors, peons, and guards) and legal actors (police personnel and lawyers). Results are discussed regarding the rejection of or support for rape myths and additional rape myths. Interestingly, we found that Indians are not supportive of rape myths that excuse rapists when they are influenced by alcohol. In support of previously researched rape myths, we found that Indians overestimated false accusations and blamed revealing clothes, women's drinking, and going out at night. We also found additional rape myths prevalent in India that are unique but not necessarily restricted to the Indian context. These include 'western' clothes, lack of parental control, disregard for traditional norms, provoking anger in males, and going out for leisure. Our findings suggest that the nature and intensity of rape myths vary according to culture. Assessment tools and educational interventions need to be tailored according to these variations.

The white racial equilibrium is a social, historical, and cultural location where whiteness is insulated from critique and the importance of race is largely ignored by white people. The expectation of the white racial equilibrium is one way white people define their whiteness, and this expectation protects white supremacist epistemologies and ideologies. We completed interviews with fourteen white undergraduate students to understand more about the processes employed by students when challenged by the white racial disequilibrium. Using consensual qualitative research (CQR), we coded their responses and found seven representative domains, with two categories endorsed by every participant: “assumption of valid knowledge” and “non-racist beliefs.” While some respondents displayed thoughtfulness about race and whiteness, findings suggest that most participants attempted to restore the white racial equilibrium by centralizing the innocence and beneficence of whiteness and white people through various rhetorical maneuvers, including (1) invoking superficial and incomplete knowledge of complex racial topics, and (2) depersonalizing themselves from racist acts and ideas, among others. This study contributes to the whiteness literature by providing descriptions of how white students attempt to re-establish the white racial equilibrium after facing disruptions to their expectations for conversations about race. Implications for anti-racist psychologists are discussed.

The aim of the study was to test variables that explain long-term commitment to volunteering among volunteers in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel. Long-term commitment to volunteering was tested by the participants’ evaluation of the stability, consistency, and intensity of their volunteering over time. Two theoretical frameworks served for explaining commitment to volunteering: the social-structural approach and the psychological characteristics approach. The sample was comprised of 504 Jewish participants: 173 men and 331 women. The data were collected via structured questionnaires distributed by nonprofit volunteer organizations. The most significant contribution to explaining long-term commitment to volunteering, in all its forms, was for psychological characteristics reflected in emotions during the pandemic and in the motives for volunteering, the volunteer's gender, level of education, and tendency to volunteer during routine times. Volunteer organizations should focus on cultivating a large and motivated population of volunteers to maintain long-term volunteering during emergencies and in routine times.

We tested how Muslim participants identify speeches as hate speech or not, and whether they thought an apology from the speakers is needed. In Studies 1a (N = 209) and 1b (N = 183), participants were asked about a speech delivered by a prominent ingroup figure showed that hate, meta-hate, and collective narcissism tended to identify a prejudiced speech about outgroup members as not related to hate speech, and thus no apology is needed. Nonetheless, the resulting path was in contrast to participants who believe the outgroup nature as good. With similar predictors of Study 1, Study 2 (N = 191) showed that when participants were asked to identify a (non-harmful) speech about ingroup delivered by a minority outgroup member, there was an opposite path compared to Study 1. Across all findings, we argue that in the real-world setting, how a speech, with or without harmful contents, is identified depends on positive or negative views about ingroup and outgroup members by which it can dictate people's understanding and denial.

This study investigated the relationship between subjective/objective socioeconomic status (SES) and self/society-oriented subjective well-being (SWB) and the moderation effect of communication activity patterns in a nationally representative sample of Chinese citizens. We found that both subjective and objective SES were related to SWB, but the association varied by SES type and age group. Three kinds of communication activity patterns emerged across different age groups: balanced, mixed, and singular. A complex moderation effect of communication activity patterns also shaped the relationship between SES and SWB. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of evolving Chinese culture and society.

Operationalizing social group identification as political partisanship, we examine followers’ (i.e., US residents’) affective experiences and behavioral responses during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in the United States (March to May 2020). In Study 1, we conducted content analyses on major news outlets’ coverage of COVID-19 (N = 4319) to examine media polarization and how it plays a role in shaping followers’ perceptions of the pandemic and leadership. News outlets trusted by Republicans portrayed US President Donald Trump as more effective, conveyed a stronger sense of certainty with less negative affective tone, and had a lower emphasis on COVID-19 prevention compared to outlets trusted by Democrats. We then conducted a field survey study (Study 2; N = 214) and found that Republicans perceived Trump as more effective, experienced higher positive affect, and engaged in less COVID-19 preventive behavior compared to Democrats. Using a longitudinal survey design in Study 3 (N = 251), we examined how emotional responses evolved in parallel with the pandemic and found further support for Study 2 findings. Collectively, our findings provide insight into the process of leadership from a social identity perspective during times of crisis, illustrating how social identity can inhibit mobilization of united efforts. The findings have implications for leadership of subgroup divides in different organizational and crisis contexts.