1,702 research outputs found
Considering the role of self-interest in moral disciplining
No full textWhy do people moralize harmless behaviors? Although people rely on cooperative principles in making their moral judgments, I argue that self-interest likely plays a role even in these judgments. I suggest potential lines of research that might examine the role of self-interest in puritanical morality
Religion as a natural laboratory for understanding human behavior
No full textWhat do we gain from the scientific study of religion? One possibility is that religious contexts are unique, and cognition within these contexts is worth understanding. Another possibility is that religion can be viewed as a laboratory for understanding psychology and culture more broadly. Rather than limiting the study of religion to a single context, I argue that the study of religion is useful precisely because it illuminates secular psychological and cultural processes. I first outline my practical approach to psychology and religion, focusing on how people use religion to advance mundane goals. I then discuss several domains in which studying religion has led to important insights, including culture, prejudice, and cognition. This article is an extended version of an Early Career Award address given at the International Association for the Psychology of Religion meeting in 2023 in Groningen, Netherlands
Google search data for psychological scientists: a tutorial and best practices
No full textGoogle searches have been described as the most important dataset on the human psyche ever assembled. Google search data—accessible through a tool called Google Trends—can provide new insights on topics as varied as stereotypes and prejudices, political attitudes, religious identity and belief, personality, motivations, psychological well-being, mental health, and culture. Google Trends can generate highly customized datasets: Users can compare the popularity of search terms across most of the world, or access longitudinal data as far back as 2004, and they can do so with high geographical and temporal granularity. Notwithstanding these opportunities, Google Trends has significant limitations. Without appropriate caution, users can easily rely on data that are not meaningful or draw mistaken conclusions. We provide a comprehensive overview and tutorial, covering (a) opportunities of Google Trends for psychological scientists; (b) how Google Trends scores are calculated, how reliable they are, and why some queries might yield low-quality data; (c) instructions with accompanying R code for creating custom datasets beyond what Google Trends provides by default; (d) example analyses for studies that could be done using Google Trends data; (e) an overview of common pitfalls; and (f) recommendations for safeguarding data quality and their interpretation
Moon Phases, Mood and Stock Market Returns: International Evidence
No full textWe employ recent data from 59 international emerging and mature stock markets to provide new evidence of a lunar cycle (full and new moon) effect on their stock market returns. Using a TGARCH model, we further examine the linkages between efficient-market theory, calendar-related effects and investors' mood resulted from moon phases. The empirical results show significant full moon effects in 6 markets, and significant new moon effects in 8 markets. In line with the theory, we report significant positive effect of new moon on stock market returns in 5 cases (UK, Switzerland, Bangladesh, Chile and Cyprus), while a negative effect of full moon is reported for the case of Jordan only. In addition, we find that lunar effects are strongly influenced by the calendar anomalies (Monday effect and January effect); several markets -mostly emerging markets- show evidence of full/new moon effects as well as Monday/January effects (Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Tunisia, Belgium, Cyprus). Further, we prove that the lunar phases are stronger outside America. These findings are recommended to investors, financial managers and analysts dealing with international stock indices
Pro-life policy preferences partly reflect desires to suppress casual sexual behavior, not solely sanctity of life concerns
No full textPro-life individuals often emphasize sanctity-of-life concerns as driving their opposition to abortion. This implies the straightforward prediction that the more strongly people oppose abortion for such reasons (e.g., “abortion is murder”), the more they will endorse policies preventing abortions (face-value account). An alternative suggests that typically nonconscious reproductive goals (e.g., discouraging casual sex) influence policy preferences; this strategic account predicts a different pattern of policy endorsement: all else equal, abortion opponents will prioritize abortion-preventing policies discouraging casual sex. A pilot study and two preregistered U.S. experiments (N = 1,960) provide relatively greater support for the strategic account: the strongest abortion opponents more strongly endorse policies that prevent abortions by discouraging casual sex (e.g., abortion bans, abstinence-only sex education) over policies that do not (comprehensive sex education)—even controlling for conservatism and religiosity. Commonly voiced arguments against abortion may be more rhetorically effective but less reflective of genuine drivers underlying arguers’ beliefs.</p
Evaluation of eGovernment websites usability in Jordan
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University on 20/12/2011.In the Information and Communications Technology era, eGovernment projects present a great opportunity for governments to offer better and quicker services to their users from the public. However, the success and the failure of these projects to achieve the expected goals depend heavily on some important aspects, mainly websites usability.
The research in this thesis focuses on the usability of eGovernment websites in Jordan as a case study, as it is one of the developing countries facing problems due to websites usability. Hence, the main aim of the research was to investigate the situation of the Jordanian eGovernment websites with a view to improving usability, as well as to propose a roadmap to reinforce websites usability in order to achieve better utilisation and a more successful eGovernment project in Jordan.
This research work achievement and major contributions have been accomplished through three stages; the first stage investigated the level of usability of eGovernment in Jordan from a manager‟s perspective. The study for this stage involved a sample of 37 managers who are in charge of managing and maintaining eGovernment projects in Jordan. The research revealed that the main problems undermining Jordanian eGovernment usability are the lack of the general usability awareness amongst management, the lack of clear usability standards and guidelines, the insufficient level of end-user involvement in the process of design and maintenance of eGovernment services, limited budgets and the lack of expert web-designers.
The second stage was to build a clear overview about the status of eGovernment websites usability in Jordan by investigating main aspects related to design that affect the success of eGovernment websites in Jordan from an end-user‟s perspective. The study for this stage involved 155 participants for testing five Jordanian eGovernment websites. It was revealed that the Jordanian eGovernment websites generally do not have a high level of usability, and that there is a lack of understanding of the needs and requirements of the end-users. In addition, the study discovered a lack of testing and monitoring of the websites, a lack of involvement of end-users, poor collaboration and coordination among government agencies, poor standardisation, and lack of trust/satisfaction.
The outcome from the early mentioned studies was used in the third stage, which has been used to establish the model to improve the usability of eGovernment websites in Jordan through a clear roadmap. The model has four components: website manager and designer, end-users, usability committee (advisory, executive), design process (usability requirements, pre-implementation test, post-implementation and maintenance). The model which was established and evaluated can be very beneficial for promoting eGovernment websites usability, in Jordan particularly and in other countries with similar backgrounds and situations.Kingdom of Jorda
The reception of W. Somerset Maugham's works
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão.Este trabalho objetiva estudar a posição do romancista inglês W. Somerset Maugham na literatura contemporânea de seu país. Se por um lado Maugham nunca foi definitivamente rotulado como um simples escritor de best-sellers, por outro lado nunca lhe foi atribuído o status de grande escritor. Ele se mantém numa espécie de posição ambígua na literatura inglesa. Reforçando essa situação há ainda o fato de que alguns de seus romances, embora tenham sido tão populares, na época de seu lançamento, quanto os modernos best-sellers têm experimentado uma duração que não é usual nesse tipo de literatura. Ao analisar a recepção crítica de seis de seus romances, um de cada fase de sua carreira literária, baseado em alguns princípios da estética da recepção de Hans Robert Jauss, nós identificamos os elementos que foram especialmente relevantes na definição do status literário de Maugham. Além disso, conforme ainda é previsto na teoria de Jauss, nós também apontamos algumas mudanças de interesse nos estudos literários que indicam um ressurgimento e possivelmente uma reavaliação da obra de Maugham no futuro
The interaction of faith and science mindsets predicts perceptions of the relationship between religion and science
No full textReligion and Science are two cultural systems that have each played a critical role in shaping human thought, feelings, and behavior, and there is an ongoing debate about the relationship between the two systems. Religion and Science may be viewed as conflicting (if one is right, the other is wrong), in dialogue (differences can be discussed and reasonably resolved), or as separate domains of inquiry. Researchers studying people's attitudes toward conflict and dialogue have focused on the main effects of religious or science-minded variables only. In contrast, we made predictions regarding an interaction effect: As faith scores increase, a positive relationship between science mindset and conflict would be attenuated (H1); and the negative relationship between science mindset and dialogue would also decrease (H2). Using a sample of 669 U.S. participants, we found support for the hypothesized interaction effect. Among participants high in faith mindset, science mindset was negatively related to conflict and positively related to dialogue. In contrast, among participants low in faith mindset, science mindset was positively related to conflict and negatively related to dialogue. Thus, it is important to consider the joint effects of faith and science mindsets when predicting views of the relationship between Religion and Science. We also explored the relationships between mindsets and Religion and Science as separate domains and found that mindsets accounted for minimal variance. We discuss how science and faith mindsets may each contribute to well-being but that endorsing a cultural narrative of Religion and Science in conflict may be detrimental to well-being
Is there anything good about atheists? Exploring positive and negative stereotypes of the religious and nonreligious
No full textNegative stereotypes about atheists are widespread, robust, rooted in distrust, and linked to discrimination. Here, we examine whether social perceivers in the United States might additionally hold any positive stereotypes about atheists (and corresponding negative stereotypes of the religious). Experiments 1 (N = 401) and 2 (N = 398, preregistered) used methods of intuitive stereotypes (the conjunction fallacy). People tended to stereotype atheists as fun, open-minded, and scientific—even as they harbor extreme intuitive anti-atheist prejudice in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 (N = 382) used a quasi-behavioral partner-choice paradigm, finding that most people choose atheist (vs. religious) partners in stereotype-relevant domains. Overall, results suggest that people simultaneously possess negative and also positive stereotypes about atheists, but that corresponding negative stereotypes of the religious may be even stronger. These effects are robust among the nonreligious and somewhat religious, but evidence is mixed about whether the highly religious harbor these positive stereotypes
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