Hopelessly Mortal: The Role of Mortality Salience, Immortality and Trait Self-esteem in Personal Hope

Do people lose hope when thinking about death? Based on Terror Management Theory, we predicted that thoughts of death (i.e., mortality salience) would reduce personal hope for people low, but not high, in self-esteem, and that this reduction in hope would be ameliorated by promises of immortality. In Studies 1 and 2, mortality salience reduced personal hope for people low in self-esteem, but not for people high in self-esteem. In Study 3, mortality salience reduced hope for people low in self-esteem when they read an argument that there is no afterlife, but not when they read “evidence” supporting life after death. In Study 4, this effect was replicated with an essay affirming scientific medical advances that promise immortality. Together, these findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of mortality interact with trait self-esteem to cause changes in personal hope, and that literal immortality beliefs can aid psychological adjustment when thinking about death. Implications for understanding personal hope, trait self-esteem, afterlife beliefs and terror management are discussed

A comparison of flash flood response at two different watersheds in Grenada, Caribbean Islands

Grenada is one of the susceptible areas to flooding. It is due to the high intensity of rainfall in each year and Grenada often hit by hurricanes and tropical storms. Flash-flood often occur in Grenada, specifically in two areas (Gouyave and St. John's watershed). Both of them have different characteristics. Gouyave watershed represents rural area, whereas St. John's watershed is an urban area. This paper aims to understand the flash-flood response of Gouyave and St. John's watershed in different return periods. It is emphasized that urbanization is an important factor related to flash-flood. This paper uses quantitative methods with flood modelling using OpenLISEM software. Input data to develop flood modelling are DEM (Digital Elevation Model), saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat), initial soil moisture, surface roughness (Manning's n), and random roughness. The result shows that St. John's watershed is more sensitive and has higher response to flash-flood than Gouyave. St. John's watershed is more urbanized which decreases water infiltration. So, it increases the potential run-off and flash-flood events become more massive

Disadvantaged-group members’ experiences of life transitions: the positive impact of social connectedness and group memberships

Whether life transitions are anticipated or unforeseen, they can be challenging to navigate because the change process involves a period of uncertainty and adjustment. Specifically, transitions often require social identity change, whereby individuals leave one or more social groups behind and join one or more groups in the new environment. Such changes can be especially hard when individuals belong to a disadvantaged group (e.g., a low-income or racial- or ethnic-minority group) because they also have to contend with the additional hurdle of systemic inequality. Yet members of disadvantaged groups also have resources to navigate social identity change during life transitions—resources that facilitate and support successful social identity change. We review our research with immigrants and university students to show how individuals’ social connectedness with groups can facilitate positive outcomes during life transitions, including social integration, psychological well-being, positive beliefs about the self, and successful academic performance. In particular, we consider individuals’ group memberships prior to the transition and the new identities they adopt in the new context as key determinants of successful identity change. We conclude with implications for policy and practice

Having a lot of a good thing: multiple important group memberships as a source of self-esteem.

Copyright: © 2015 Jetten et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedMembership in important social groups can promote a positive identity. We propose and test an identity resource model in which personal self-esteem is boosted by membership in additional important social groups. Belonging to multiple important group memberships predicts personal self-esteem in children (Study 1a), older adults (Study 1b), and former residents of a homeless shelter (Study 1c). Study 2 shows that the effects of multiple important group memberships on personal self-esteem are not reducible to number of interpersonal ties. Studies 3a and 3b provide longitudinal evidence that multiple important group memberships predict personal self-esteem over time. Studies 4 and 5 show that collective self-esteem mediates this effect, suggesting that membership in multiple important groups boosts personal self-esteem because people take pride in, and derive meaning from, important group memberships. Discussion focuses on when and why important group memberships act as a social resource that fuels personal self-esteem.This study was supported by 1. Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT110100238) awarded to Jolanda Jetten (see http://www.arc.gov.au) 2. Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP110200437) to Jolanda Jetten and Genevieve Dingle (see http://www.arc.gov.au) 3. support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being Program to Nyla Branscombe, S. Alexander Haslam, and Catherine Haslam (see http://www.cifar.ca)

How conceptualising obesity as a disease affects beliefs about weight, and associated weight stigma and clinical decision-making in health care

Objectives: This study empirically investigated how conceptualizing obesity as a disease (i.e., pathologizing obesity) affects beliefs about weight, and weight stigma and discrimination among health professionals. Design: An experiment that manipulated the pathologization of obesity was completed by a multi-nation sample of health professionals from Australia, UK, and USA (N = 365). Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions where they were asked to conceptualize obesity as a disease or not a disease; then presented with a hypothetical medical profile of a patient with obesity who was seeking care for migraines. We measured biogenetic causal beliefs about obesity, endorsement of weight as a heuristic for health, negative obesity stereotypes, and treatment decisions. Results: Participants in the disease (vs. non-disease) condition endorsed biogenetic causal beliefs more strongly and made more migraine-related treatment recommendations. No effect of the manipulation was found for the remaining outcomes. Biogenetic causal beliefs about obesity were associated with less weight stigma. Endorsing weight as a heuristic for health was associated with greater weight stigma and differential treatment recommendations focused more on the patient's weight and less on their migraines. Conclusions: Pathologizing obesity may reinforce biogenetic explanations for obesity. Evidence demonstrates complex associations between weight-related beliefs and weight stigma and discrimination. Biogenetic causal beliefs were associated with less weight stigma, while endorsing weight as a heuristic for health was associated with greater weight stigma and differential treatment. Further research is needed to inform policies that can promote health without perpetuating weight-based rejection in health care

‘Distancers’ and ‘non-distancers’? The potential social psychological impact of moralizing COVID-19 mitigating practices on sustained behaviour change

COVID‐19 mitigating practices such as ‘hand‐washing’, ‘social distancing’, or ‘social isolating’ are constructed as ‘moral imperatives’, required to avert harm to oneself and others. Adherence to COVID‐19 mitigating practices is presently high among the general public, and stringent lockdown measures supported by legal and policy intervention have facilitated this. In the coming months, however, as rules are being relaxed and individuals become less strict, and thus, the ambiguity in policy increases, the maintenance of recommended social distancing norms will rely on more informal social interactional processes. We argue that the moralization of these practices, twinned with relaxations of policy, may likely cause interactional tension between those individuals who do vs. those who do not uphold social distancing in the coming months: that is, derogation of those who adhere strictly to COVID‐19 mitigating practices and group polarization between ‘distancers’ and ‘non‐distancers’. In this paper, we explore how and why these processes might come to pass, their impact on an overall societal response to COVID‐19, and the need to factor such processes into decisions regarding how to lift restriction

When group members admit to being conformist: the role of relative intragroup status in conformity self-reports

Authors' draft; final version published in Personality and Social Psychology BulletinFive studies examined the hypothesis that people will strategically portray the self as being more group influenced the more junior they feel within the group. Among social psychologists (Study 1), ratings of self-conformity by group members were greater when the status of the participant was low than when it was high. These effects were replicated in Studies 2, 3, and 4 in which relative intragroup status was manipulated. In Study 3, the authors found junior group members described themselves as more conformist than senior members when they were addressing an ingroup audience, but when they were addressing an outgroup audience the effect disappeared. Furthermore, junior members (but not senior members) rated themselves as more conformist when they were led to believe their responses were public than when responses were private (Study 5). The discussion focuses on the strategic processes underlying low-status group members’ self-reports of group influence and the functional role of conformity in groups

Draft genome sequences of gammaproteobacterial methanotrophs isolated from marine ecosystems

The genome sequences of Methylobacter marinus A45, Methylobacter sp. strain BBA5.1, and Methylomarinum vadi IT-4 were obtained. These aerobic methanotrophs are typical members of coastal and hydrothermal vent marine ecosystems