Popularized by Richard Hofstadter, the notion of "paranoid style" is the most influential attempt at applying the category of paranoia to the study of politics. Yet, the success of this elegant ...formula conceals a complex history and a set of unarticulated assumptions about the connections between symbolic phenomena, psychopathological states, and politics. The article proceeds to recover these assumptions and suggests that the notion of "paranoid style" is ultimately indeterminate, making its application arbitrary and ideological.
Malawi has experienced a boom in radio and television stations, newspapers, online media, and a democratic dispensation has been put in place, but reporting of human rights abuses in the country is ...unsatisfactory. One of the most pressing issues at the moment in the country is the killing, maiming, abduction and disappearance of persons with albinism. Persons with albinism face discrimination and stigma based on false beliefs. A content analysis of Malawian newspaper articles on the attacks on persons with albinism suggests that reporting is largely specific, reactive and superficial. The articles from the Times Media Group and Nation Publications Limited published between 2016 and 2018, seem not to aim at demystifying the issue of albinism as a mere disability, and the press portray persons with albinism as helpless victims of voodoo. There is hardly any framing of articles to show positive contributions or normalcy of persons with albinism. The Malawian newspapers should highlight their achievements and portray them as more than mere victims. Additionally, there is a role for investigative journalism to help in tracking buyers of body parts of persons with albinism. Better reporting of violations would ultimately help raise human rights standards in Malawi and Africa as a whole.
TITRE ET RÉSUMÉ EN FRANCAIS:
Journalisme et normes des droits de l’homme en Afrique: le reportage sur les violences à l’égard des albinos dans les journaux au Malawi
RÉSUMÉ:
Au Malawi, les stations de radio et de télévision, les journaux et les médias en ligne connaissent un essor considérable dans un environnement de libéralisation mais le reportage sur les violations des droits de l’homme dans le pays n’est pas satisfaisant. L’assassinat, la mutilation, l’enlèvement et la disparition de personnes atteintes d’albinisme sont l’un des problèmes les plus urgents dans le pays. Les personnes atteintes d’albinisme font face à la discrimination et à la stigmatisation fondées sur de fausses croyances. Une analyse du contenu d’articles de journaux au Malawi sur les attaques contre des personnes atteintes d’albinisme suggère que le reportage est en grande partie spécifique, réactif et superficiel. Les articles du Daily Times and the Nation publiés entre 2016 et 2018 ne semblent pas viser à démystifier le problème de l’albinisme en tant que simple handicap, et la presse dépeint les personnes atteintes d’albinisme comme des victimes impuissantes de la superstition. Il n’existe guère un effort dans la rédaction d’articles montrant des contributions positives ou la normalité des personnes atteintes d’albinisme. Les journaux au Malawi devraient mettre l’accès sur leurs réalisations et les décrire davantage comme de simples victimes. En outre, le journalisme d’investigation a un rôle à jouer dans le suivi des acheteurs de parties du corps de personnes atteintes d’albinisme. Un meilleur reportage des violations aiderait en fin de compte à relever les normes des droits de l’homme au Malawi et en Afrique en général.
The symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are highly heterogeneous and it is unclear what is the optimal way to conceptualize this heterogeneity. This study aimed to establish a ...comprehensive symptom structure model of OCD across the lifespan using factor and network analytic techniques.
A large multinational cohort of well-characterized children, adolescents, and adults diagnosed with OCD (
= 1366) participated in the study. All completed the Dimensional Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale, which contains an expanded checklist of 87 distinct OCD symptoms. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to outline empirically supported symptom dimensions, and interconnections among the resulting dimensions were established using network analysis. Associations between dimensions and sociodemographic and clinical variables were explored using structural equation modeling (SEM).
Thirteen first-order symptom dimensions emerged that could be parsimoniously reduced to eight broad dimensions, which were valid across the lifespan: Disturbing Thoughts, Incompleteness, Contamination, Hoarding, Transformation, Body Focus, Superstition, and Loss/Separation. A general OCD factor could be included in the final factor model without a significant decline in model fit according to most fit indices. Network analysis showed that Incompleteness and Disturbing Thoughts were most central (i.e. had most unique interconnections with other dimensions). SEM showed that the eight broad dimensions were differentially related to sociodemographic and clinical variables.
Future research will need to establish if this expanded hierarchical and multidimensional model can help improve our understanding of the etiology, neurobiology and treatment of OCD.
Development of a Naïve Theory of Superstition Woolley, Jacqueline D.; Baca, Paola A.; Kelley, Kelsey A.
Journal of cognition and development,
01/01/2024, 2024-01-00, 20240101, Letnik:
25, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on ...stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically, whether people attribute apparent superstitious efficacy to magical forces or to something else, such as reduced stress or increased confidence. In two studies we asked 6- to 9-year-old children and adults from the United States to rate how causally connected superstitious behaviors were to desired outcomes. In Study 1, participants provided open-ended responses to questions probing why they believed the actions were tied to the outcomes. Participants were more likely across ages to offer natural than magical explanations to explain the connection - this became more pronounced with age. In Study 2, half the stories did not permit a plausible natural explanation, thus any perceived causal relation could only be attributable to magic. Participants were asked how connected the superstitious behaviors were to the outcomes. We found significant differences in ratings of connectedness between stories that held plausible natural explanations and those that did not in our adult sample only. Our findings suggest that people recruit their naive psychology when reasoning about the efficacy of superstitious behaviors; however, children may also believe magic to be causally relevant.
This paper examines how language is used to show shared beliefs between caregivers and pregnant women in antenatal classes in the Nigerian context, which hitherto suffers neglect. The data consist of ...tape recordings and observational notes taken during antenatal classes in selected hospitals in Lokoja, Nigeria. The study adopted a top-down analytic approach using Odebunmi’s model of contextual beliefs, supported by van Dijk’s epistemic context model, and Fetzer and Fischer’s lexical markers model. The analysis shows three categories of shared knowledge: a. state of pregnancy and postnatal care b. sexual relationships and spice lexemes c. traditional child care and superstitions. Shared knowledge of the state of pregnancy and postnatal care manifests in pregnancy misconceptions, nutrition during pregnancy and postnatal care orientations highlighted by lexical markers such as recoverable knowledge connector and joint attention builder. Shared knowledge of sexual relations and spice lexemes reflect sexual communication and native spices using metaphorization and proximal deictic lexical markers. Grandmothers’ involvement and insistence on using traditional methods and superstitions frame shared knowledge of traditional child care and superstitions through belief affirmative and self-reformulation markers. Analysis of the shared beliefs shows how caregivers represent pregnant women’s mental knowledge in interactions as well as how pregnant women interject beliefs for clarification and validity. This way, both participants demonstrate how contextual beliefs facilitate communicative processes and meaningful understanding in their interactions.
Across all cultures, people frequently engage in ritualized (non-instrumental) behaviors. How do those causally opaque actions affect perceptions of causal efficacy? Using real-life stimuli extracted ...from NCAA basketball games, we asked fans, players of the game, and subjects naive to the game to predict the outcome of free throw attempts. We found that the performance of personal pre-shot rituals increased the perception of shot efficacy irrespective of subjects' level of knowledge of and involvement in the game. Those effects became stronger when the score was less favorable for the shooter's team. Our findings suggest that even in non-religious contexts, people make intuitive judgements about ritual efficacy, and that those judgements are sensitive to ecological factors. The implications of those biases extend beyond sports, to various domains of public action, such as religion, courtrooms, college life, and political events.
We empirically investigate the effect of traditional Chinese numerological superstitions over market-wide herding in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for the 2000–2020 period, based on a ...classification of stocks as lucky/unlucky contingent on the presence of digits deemed numerologically lucky/unlucky in their tickers. We find no compelling evidence that herding is more pronounced in those superstitious stocks, as compared to the rest of the stock market. Both superstitious stock-types herd exclusively on high-volatility days and exhibit some pronounced patterns in up vs down markets; these effects are not significantly different from the behaviour of non-superstitious stocks, however. Similarly, herding in both superstitious stock-types is largely noise-driven, but the same effect is observed for non-superstitious stocks. The similarities in herding between superstitious and non-superstitious stocks suggest that numerological superstitions do not motivate significantly stronger herding in Chinese markets.
•Stocks classified based on digits deemed lucky/unlucky in their tickers•No evidence that herding is more pronounced in superstitious stocks•Result irrespective of market state, volatility, institutional ownership, and proximity to festive periods.•Result irrespective of noise- vs fundamentals-driven herding.•Investor sentiment appears to be the dominant behavioural driver of herding instead.
Actively open-minded thinking (AOT) is measured by questionnaire items that tap the willingness to consider alternative opinions, the sensitivity to evidence contradictory to current beliefs, the ...willingness to postpone closure, and reflective thought. AOT has been found to be a strong predictor of performance on heuristics and biases tasks and of the avoidance of reasoning traps such as superstitious thinking and belief in conspiracy theories. Recently, several studies that have employed short forms of the AOT scale have shown startlingly high negative correlations with religiosity (in the range of −0.50 to −0.70). In a re-analysis of a large dataset, we demonstrate that it was a particular type of AOT item (termed a belief revision item, BR) that accounts for these large correlations. To our consternation, we realized that it was our research team that had introduced these items into the literature two decades ago, but we had heretofore never realized the potential for these items to skew correlations. In a new experiment, we demonstrate how BR items of this type disadvantage religious-minded subjects, and we show that it is possible to construct BR items with parallel content that are not so demographically biased. We also show that unbiased BR items do not sacrifice the predictive power that has previously been shown by AOT scales. We believe this lesson in item construction resulted from the lack of intellectual diversity in our own laboratory (specifically, the overwhelmingly secular composition of our lab personnel). We believe this case study shows the importance of intellectual diversity in psychology, especially when studying such topics as religiosity and political attitudes.
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.
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