Search Results (33)

Religious symbols and figures are gaining new life in popular culture. Reinterpretations of symbols rooted in the visual arts tradition are appearing in film, TV series and short audiovisual forms presented on the Internet, especially on social media. This also applies to angels, to which the author’s research would be devoted. This article discusses images of “secular angels”, decontextualized religious symbols, popularized throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in the visual media of Western culture. From the rich research material, the most characteristic images are selected for discussion and interpretation and subjected to interpretation in the spirit of discourse analysis. The images of modern “angels” in the texts of popular culture refer not so much to their biblical prototypes, but to the moral condition of man in consumerist, individualistic societies focused on living for pleasure. Film, TV series and Internet images of “angels” also show the controversies and social problems (such as racism) faced by contemporary Western societies. Full article

The rapid recognition of the contributions of theology in public spaces in Africa is a positive development. It is understood that theology can only be impactful if it engages public issues in their context. However, the understanding of the public in public theology is blurry because its precise meaning remains debatable. The construct ‘publics’ is hugely influenced by Western conception, where human interaction spaces are categorized into separate sects of social spaces. This conception arguably derives from the Western individualistic operative ideology. The question is whether the notion of public theology can be extended to include African public praxis to contribute to effective engagement with public issues in Africa. This article explores and broadens the concept of public theology by incorporating African public praxis. It investigates how public theology, traditionally understood within a Western context, can be expanded to include African societies’ distinct and diverse practices, experiences, and contexts. First, this article comprehensively analyzes the meaning of ‘public’ in public theology, focusing on unique, distinctive African perspectives and experiences. Second, the article elucidates the multifaceted dimensions of public theology as it intersects with African social, political, and cultural realities. Thirdly, the article offers fresh insights into the transformative potential of theological reflections within African public praxis. The article presents a discussion on the importance of understanding what public theology is in an African context. Understanding public theology in Africa will contribute to its effectiveness. It enriches the discourse on the role of public theology in addressing challenges that Africans face. Full article

An essentialist view of gender and an individualistic concept of subjectivity have distanced psychological theories from emancipatory feminist projects. In Brazil, similar to some other psychological orientations, the behavior-analytic field has sought an interface with feminism. The anti-essentialist vein of radical behaviorism underpins the early movement toward feminism. This essay aims to expand the area of contact with feminism through a theoretical proposal for understanding women’s subjectivity inspired by Brazilian behavior-analytic literature. From a contextualized, multidimensional, pluralized, and politicized view of subjectivity, women’s subjectivation is forged in a tripartite complex of body, person, and “self”, whose relative unity is susceptible to changes and conflicts. In a patriarchal, racist, and cis-heteronormative society, such as the Brazilian one, subjectivation is also an oppressive process. Nevertheless, the essay demonstrates that women’s subjectivation can be a process of emancipatory liberation. This possibility is glimpsed within a virtuous dialectical circuit between disruptive verbal communities (uncommitted to institutional, hierarchical, and oppressive social control) and subversive subjectivities. Thus, behavior-analytic psychology has theoretical tools to situate the process of women’s subjectivation not as a locus of depoliticization but as a crucial ally in constructing a more equitable and just society, as envisioned by feminism. Full article

Cybersecurity procedures and policies are prevalent countermeasures for protecting organizations from cybercrimes and security incidents. Without considering human behaviors, implementing these countermeasures will remain useless. Cybersecurity behavior has gained much attention in recent years. However, a systematic review that provides extensive insights into cybersecurity behavior through different technologies and services and covers various directions in large-scale research remains lacking. Therefore, this study retrieved and analyzed 2210 articles published on cybersecurity behavior. The retrieved articles were then thoroughly examined to meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria, in which 39 studies published between 2012 and 2021 were ultimately picked for further in-depth analysis. The main findings showed that the protection motivation theory (PMT) dominated the list of theories and models examining cybersecurity behavior. Cybersecurity behavior and intention behavior counted for the highest purpose for most studies, with fewer studies focusing on cybersecurity awareness and compliance behavior. Most examined studies were conducted in individualistic contexts with limited exposure to collectivistic societies. A total of 56% of the analyzed studies focused on the organizational level, indicating that the individual level is still in its infancy stage. To address the research gaps in cybersecurity behavior at the individual level, this review proposes a number of research agendas that can be considered in future research. This review is believed to improve our understanding by revealing the full potential of cybersecurity behavior and opening the door for further research opportunities. Full article

Volunteering work has always played a key role in dealing with crises around the world. Understanding the motivations behind volunteering during a crisis could not only explain such behaviour but also become a guide for the government for future policies, to non-governmental organizations for attracting and recruiting more volunteers, for companies to attract and engage young talent and for society to encourage volunteering more. The present military conflict between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in an influx of over six million Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Given the phenomenal response of Polish people towards welcoming the Ukrainian refugees and, in general, the favourable attitude of the youth in Poland towards extending humanitarian aid to them, our present study examines the motivations of Polish youths behind volunteering during crises. The study also examined how volunteering has influenced their lives and future, besides understanding the barriers to volunteering. The research participants were Polish youths aged between 17–30 years of age. The participants were from both genders, students as well as working professionals. To take part, they had to prove that they took an active role in volunteering during a crisis and were able to share their personal stories and emotions in English. The findings of the research revealed normative, hedonic, eudaimonic and personal motivators behind volunteering during crises, with greater dominance of hedonic motivators, followed by normative, then eudaimonic and personal motivators. The influence of a mix of collectivist and individualistic cultures of Poland, with a progressive lean towards individualism, is clear in shaping the motivations behind the volunteering of these Polish youths. The role of intrinsic motivation is more pronounced when it comes to volunteering during crises. Full article

Can Afro-communitarianism serve as a viable ideology for addressing the human interaction challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic? The ongoing pandemic poses many challenges to the normal functioning of societies around the world. For example, it has caused problems ranging from social, economic, and political disruption to various forms of hardship, including pain, suffering, and millions of deaths. One problem that is not attracting sufficient attention is a disruption to human interaction that leads to isolation, depression, mental health, and emotional crises. This paper will investigate whether Afro-communitarianism can function as an ideological option for addressing this challenge. This ideology, in our opinion, can foster social integration and the type of informal solidarity that engenders emotionally helpful interactions among humans. We will also argue that Afro-communitarian orientation can overturn the individualistic tendencies that hamper efforts aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus. Full article

The present research concerns the extent to which explanations for desirable or undesirable academic outcomes (grades) as well as cultural orientation could account for self-efficacy beliefs of female undergraduate students from two societies with dissimilar cultural traditions. The United States of America (U.S.) was selected for its individualistic culture, whereas the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was chosen for its mix of traditional collectivist and individualistic values. A matched-pairs design ensured that students’ self-efficacy levels were equated between cultural groups (n = 560; 280 matched pairs). The research uncovered cultural differences in the choice of explanations and in the extent to which explanations might contribute to self-efficacy beliefs. These findings represent a blueprint for informing instructional interventions intended to effectively prepare students from different cultures for academic success. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought several challenges to businesses and societies. In response, many corporations have supported local communities and authorities in the management of the pandemic. Although these initiatives, which can be considered forms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), were highly coupled with explicit CSR communication campaigns, little is known about whether these campaigns were effective. Previous research indicates that culture can shape people’s perceptions of CSR initiatives and communications, suggesting that businesses pay attention to careful consideration of cultural norms for effective CSR communication. However, the COVID-19 pandemic as a new CSR setting may challenge earlier findings. This study empirically investigates whether three cultural factors (individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance) affect public perceptions measured as recall of and favorability towards corporate COVID-19 response initiatives across six countries. Findings from a representative survey of adults across these countries show that respondents in individualistic and collectivistic countries recall these CSR communication campaigns about these corporate COVID-19 response initiatives quite differently, and these are related to differences in power distance and uncertainty avoidance. However, no difference was found in overall corporate favorability, indicating that cultural factors did not affect levels of favorability towards such initiatives. This, we argue, can be explained by the global dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the context of these CSR initiatives. This study contributes to CSR communication literature with empirical findings from a global pandemic setting. It offers businesses and managers empirical grounds to understand the communicative impact of COVID-19 response initiatives, which can inform future CSR actions. Full article

An increasing body of research suggests that young people living in Western societies are becoming increasingly individualistic in the way they orientate themselves socially, with further findings suggestive that such orientations may be associated with reduced wellbeing outcomes. Through a systematic review of past research, this paper examines the findings on individualism and the wellbeing of young people living within Western contexts. Findings from our review indicate that whilst individualistic cultures may be associated with higher wellbeing outcomes when compared with collectivistic cultures, such associations tend to disappear when explored at the personal level. Additionally, we find that distinguishing how individualism is measured provides important insight into specific traits associated with individualism that can lead to poorer wellbeing outcomes. Based on the studies reviewed, we propose that whilst the freedom and autonomy embedded within individualistic social orientations can have positive associations, there is an emerging understanding of some of the darker traits that can be associated with these values. These synthesized findings increase our understanding of the connection between individualism, its associated behaviours, and the mental health of young people. Full article

The recent nationwide debate of American Protestant churches over the ordination and consecration of LGBTQ clergymen and laypeople has been largely divisive and destructive. While a few studies have paid attention to individual efforts of congregations to negotiate the heated conflicts as their contribution to the denominational debate, no studies have recounted how post-1965 immigrants, often deemed as “ethnic enclaves apart from larger American society”, respond to this religious issue. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a first-generation Korean Methodist church in the Tampa Bay area, Florida, this article attempts to fill this gap in the literature. In brief, I argue that the Tampa Korean-American Methodists’ continual exposure to the Methodist Church’s larger denominational homosexuality debate and their personal relationships with gay and lesbian friends in everyday life together work to facilitate their gradual tolerance toward sexual minorities as a sign of their accommodation of individualistic and democratic values of American society. Full article

Previous studies have pointed out that it is hard to achieve the level of herd immunity for the population and then effectively stop disease propagation from the perspective of public health, if individuals just make vaccination decisions based on individualism. Individuals in reality often exist in the form of groups and cooperate in or among communities. Meanwhile, society studies have suggested that we cannot ignore the existence and influence of collectivism for studying individuals’ decision-making. Regarding this, we formulate two vaccination strategies: individualistic strategy and collectivist strategy. The former helps individuals taking vaccination action after evaluating their perceived risk and cost of themselves, while the latter focuses on evaluating their contribution to their communities. More significantly, we propose a reinforcement learning mechanism based on policy gradient. Each individual can adaptively pick one of these two strategies after weighing their probabilities with a two-layer neural network whose parameters are dynamically updated with his/her more and more vaccination experience. Experimental results on scale-free networks verify that the reinforcement learning mechanism can effectively improve the vaccine coverage level of communities. Moreover, communities can always get higher total payoffs with fewer costs paid, comparing that of pure individualistic strategy. Such performance mostly stems from individuals’ adaptively picking collectivist strategy. Our study suggests that public health authorities should encourage individuals to make vaccination decisions from the perspective of their local mixed groups. Especially, it is more worthy of noting that individuals with low degrees are more significant as their vaccination behaviors can more sharply improve vaccination coverage of their groups and greatly reduce epidemic size. Full article

Human societies are characterized by three constituent features, besides others. (A) Options, as for jobs and societal positions, differ with respect to their associated monetary and non-monetary payoffs. (B) Competition leads to reduced payoffs when individuals compete for the same option as others. (C) People care about how they are doing relatively to others. The latter trait—the propensity to compare one’s own success with that of others—expresses itself as envy. It is shown that the combination of (A)–(C) leads to spontaneous class stratification. Societies of agents split endogenously into two social classes, an upper and a lower class, when envy becomes relevant. A comprehensive analysis of the Nash equilibria characterizing a basic reference game is presented. Class separation is due to the condensation of the strategies of lower-class agents, which play an identical mixed strategy. Upper-class agents do not condense, following individualist pure strategies. The model and results are size-consistent, holding for arbitrary large numbers of agents and options. Analytic results are confirmed by extensive numerical simulations. An analogy to interacting confined classical particles is discussed. Full article

The aim of this paper is to understand public preferences for several future scenarios of achieving a healthier, more equitable and sustainable Europe, which differ in the way the society is organized (individualistically vs. collectively) and in the driving sector (public vs. private). To achieve this aim, we conducted a questionnaire survey using representative samples for five European countries in 2018. About three thousand respondents chose among the four scenarios presented within four different contexts (green spaces, active mobility, energy-efficient housing, food consumption) or none of them. A majority of people in the five European countries were ready to accept one of the scenarios. We found significant differences in preferences according to socioeconomic backgrounds and values of respondents. People above 35 years old, those who were less educated, and those in the lowest household income tertile were less supportive of all scenarios. The heterogeneity in preferences associated with differences in socioeconomic backgrounds was larger for the scenario in which society is organized individualistically and driven by the private sector. Smaller distinctions were found in case of the scenario in which society is organized collectively and is driven by the public sector. Departing from social psychological theories, we examine the role of altruistic, biospheric, egoistic, hedonic, and security values. People with stronger biospheric values were more likely to accept scenarios, particularly those which are driven by the public sector and where there is more collective organisation. Those with a more egoistic value orientation were more likely to have higher preferences for scenarios where the private sector had a dominant role. The policy implications, in terms of the selection and framing of policy measures to enhance public support, are discussed. Full article

Scholars in critical race and the sociology of religion have independently drawn attention to the ways in which cultural ideologies drive beliefs about inequalities between groups. Critical race work on “abstract liberalism” highlights non-racially inflected language that tacitly reinforces White socioeconomic outcomes resulting from an allegedly fair social system. Sociologists of religion have noted that White Evangelical Christian theology promotes an individualist mindset that places blame for racial inequalities on the perceived failings of Blacks. Using data from the National Asian American Survey 2016, we return to this question and ask whether beliefs about the importance of equal opportunity reveal similarities or differences between religious Asian American and Latino Christians and Black and White Christians. The results confirm that White Christians are generally the least supportive of American society providing equal opportunity for all. At the other end, Black Christians were the most supportive. However, with the inclusion of Asian American Christian groups, we note that second generation Asian American and Latino Evangelicals hew closer to the White Christian mean, while most other Asian and Latino Christian groups adhere more closely to the Black Christian mean. This study provides further support for the recent claims of religion’s complex relationship with other stratifying identities. It suggests that cultural assimilation among second generation non-Black Evangelical Christians heads more toward the colorblind racist attitudes of many White Christians, whereas potential for new coalitions of Latino and Black Christians could emerge, given their shared perceptions of the persistent inequality in their communities. Full article

Limited research in the psychology literature has addressed the specifics of children’s future orientations. Using a thematic approach, the present study investigates children’s personal aspirations for their adult lives via a questionnaire that addressed (1) the types of aspiration profiles present in a sample of 456 Italian students aged 8–13 and balanced for gender, and (2) how these profiles differ according to demographics, the number of aspirations, academic and social self-efficacy, life satisfaction, and academic achievement. Using cluster analysis, three aspiration profiles emerged, which include individualistic (focused on the possible future self), independent (concentrated on one’s own future family and independence), and social (focused on future friends and the family of origin). The independent profile demonstrated better overall psychological and academic adjustment than did the other two profiles. The article discusses the results of the study using the framework of self-determination theory in the context of Italian society. Full article