Toward the Globalization of Psychology. The Congresses Around the World (1974–1998)

This book introduces the history of psychology during the past hundred years, mainly through conferences/congresses. In fact, for psychologists, the creation of international conferences was seen as a useful step in exchanging and promoting psychology as a science. Since the first international congress in 1889, psychologists from all over the world have met regularly at congresses with more and more attendees and many interesting topics to discuss.2019-2

Proceedings and papers.

First Congress held 1889; congresses not held 1910-1922 and 1938-1947.Proceedings of 10th Congress issued as volume 1, no. 1 of Acta psychologica; 14th-16th as Acta psychologica.Mode of access: Internet

Does heteroreligious priming increase prosociality? It depends on the religion.

Series of priming studies have shown that implicit activation of religious concepts leads to prosocial effects (activation of prosocial concepts, willingness to volunteer, cooperation, low retaliation). All these studies used Christian religious primes among participants of Christian background. What if priming participants with concepts from another than their own religion? In a recent study, prejudice against homosexuals was found to increase after (Christian) participants from the US were primed with a Buddhist version of the Golden Rule (Vilaythong et al., 2010). We argue that the other religion’s effects depend on the positive valence attributed to another than one’s own religion rather than on a general “outgroup” effect. In the present experiment, 117 Belgian students of Christian tradition were randomly assigned to three conditions: Buddhist prime, Muslim prime, and control (no prime). Primes were pictures that decorated the experimental room. Afterwards, participants’ prosociality was measured through a task of sharing hypothetical gains. Primes of a positively seen “other” religion, i.e. Buddhism, but not of a negatively seen other religion, i.e. Islam, implicitly increased prosociality. Social context moderates effects of religious priming on social behavior

The social psychology of religion: Understanding religious prejudice (Symposium).

Since Gordon W. Allport's groundbreaking studies on the relation between religion and prejudice (Allport, 1950; 1954; Allport & Ross, 1967), his conclusion that religion both makes and unmakes prejudice is crucial for both Social Psychology and Psychology of Religion. Recent research has shed light on diverse religious orientations which differ in their relation to prejudice, on differing targets of prejudice, on possible moderators and mediators of the relation between religion and prejudice, and on general psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship (Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010; Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009); Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005). Our panel presents a series of recent studies discovering how religious orientations and several types of prejudice are intertwined. The first paper (Henseler, Carvacho & Zick) includes a number of studies about the relation between religious beliefs and Group Focused Enmity (GFE) and of social dominance orientation (SDO) as an important mediator of this relation. The second paper (Clobert & Saroglou) presents findings of a priming study wherein primes of religious outgroups (Buddhists, Muslims) increased or decreased prosociality depending on the valence attributed to the respective religious outgroup. The third paper presents results of a study wherein several Implicit Association Tests (IATs) have been employed to measure inter-religious prejudice on the implicit level of cognition (Klein & Streib). The fourth paper (Blogowska & Saroglou) takes a closer look at the question whether religious prejudice towards homosexuals might lead to concrete physical aggression or not by presenting a study using the hot sauce allocation paradigm

How Do The Perceptions Of Healthcare Professionals Help To Understand The Difficulties In Integrating Patient Education Into Care Practices? A Mixed-method Study.

Background: Two decades after the WHO has defined patient education, its integration into care practices remains a challenge. The mutual influence between professionals' practices and perceptions, well-known in literature but little explored in patient education, might open avenues to a better understanding of these implementation difficulties. Methods: The sample considered was European French-speaking healthcare professionals (nurses, physicians, pharmacists, dieticians…) practising patient education in all kinds of chronic health problems. This study followed a mixed-method design. It proceeded in three phases alternating exploratory qualitative research and confirmatory quantitative research. Results: Original tendencies in professionals' perceptions provide new insights on the implementation difficulties: different perceptions among practitioners for concepts which are considered to be consensual (autonomy, global health, …); perceptions (of the context, patient education or the illness) which encourage practitioner-centred approaches; an inclination for subjective psychological health objectives. Conclusion: Perceptions of the healthcare professionals help to understand why the practices of patient education are still mostly practitioner-centred and not integrated into care. Different types of perceptions were associated with educational practices. Actions: Recommendations cannot focus on perceptions of patient education alone, as other perceptions (context, illness, patient and oneself) are at work. No panacea is relevant for all professionals. If training, intervision, settings supporting reflexivity, and co-negotiated approaches should be promoted, the professional's type(s) of practices has/have to be considered

South African psychology can and should provide leadership in advancing understanding of sexual and gender diversity on the African continent

College of Human Science

Disentangling the effects of autonomy-support and structure on engagement and learning

According to the self-determination theory, autonomy-support (opportunities given to students to determine their behaviors and creation of congruence between students’ inner motives and classroom activities) and structure (amount and clarity of information given about the way to achieve desired outcomes; Jang et al., 2010) are two fostering-engagement and learning practices. However, few studies, mostly correlational, simultaneously tested the effects of both practices on engagement. Regarding learning, studies focused only on autonomy-support and produced inconsistent results. Vansteenkiste and colleagues (2004) found higher learning in autonomy-supportive contexts. Furtak and Kunter (2012) found higher learning in the least (e.g. teacher showed how to do) than in the most autonomy-supportive context (e.g. students encouraged to find their own solutions). These conditions may also have manipulated structure, which would explain contradictory findings. Thus, differentiate the effects of structure and autonomysupport is needed. This study aimed at testing the main effects and interaction of both dimensions on engagement and learning. 84 students in psychology performed a learning task on computer. They were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions based on a 2 (moderated vs. high structure) X 2 (low vs. high autonomy-support) between-participants design. Structure was manipulated through the communication of expectations and guidance during the task; autonomy-support, through the opportunity of choice, autonomy-supportive vocabulary, and relevance of examples given (Reeve, 2006; Jang et al., 2010). After the task, participants filled in questionnaires about their engagement and learning. When structure was high, they reported significantly more engagement and learned more, controlling for gender and previous knowledge. No effects of autonomy-support or interaction were found. These results stress the importance of structure for engagement and learning. Contradictory to previous findings, no effects of autonomy-support were found. Given the study design, these results cannot be generalized to all situations. In classroom settings, other variables as teacher support could also be influential for students’ outcomes (Furrer & Skinner, 2003). However, this study is a step forward in the understanding of respective effects of autonomy-support and structure

School and classroom effects on bullying and peer victimization.

Rationale. Most studies about bullying focused on individual characteristics of bullies and victims. Only very few studies have investigated the effect of school and classroom factors on bullying. These studies indicated that between-classroom variance is higher than between-school variance. From theoretical and practical points of view, one key issue is to know if those school and classroom effects are related to educational practices rather than to the composition of the student body. At the school level, available studies only controlled for school size and mean socio-economic status. At the classroom level, composition effects have not been tested. Regarding educational practices, existing studies relied on different theoretical background and measured different dimensions: bullying and peer victimization were found to be associated with performance goal structure, teacher-student relationships, autonomy-support, structure and support. In the absence of integrative studies, it is hard to identify from those findings which kind of educational practices is more directly related to bullying and victimization. Aims. The aims of this study were (a) to assess the size of school and classroom effects on bullying/victimization, (b) to investigate the contribution of school and classroom composition to these effects, and (c) to test the contribution of a variety of educational practices to between-schools and -classrooms differences. Method. Three thousands two hundreds and sixty-three students in grade 9 (mean age 15) from 234 classrooms nested in 64 urban schools completed an anonymous questionnaire about socio-demographic characteristics, teachers practices, and involvement in bullying and peer victimization. Results. Age, grades, parental education level, parental employment, family structure, family wealth, ethnicity, and language spoken at home, were not correlated with bullying and victimization. Male reported more bullying than female. Multilevel analyses showed no significant school effects and small classroom effects on bullying and victimization. At the classroom level, composition effects were null to very small. Classroom management and competitive goal structure explained between-classroom variations in bullying and victimization. These results suggest that interventions targeted at daily classroom practices could be a way to prevent or reduce school bullying and peer victimization