Are we bad winners? : Public understandings of the United Nations’ World Happiness Report among Finnish digital media and their readers

In this research, we investigate the public understanding of the World Happiness Report within the context of its highest-ranking country: Finland. We analyse how two actors, Finnish online media and their readers, understood the publication as well as the concept being measured: happiness. Digital media adopted an ambivalent stance towards both the World Happiness Report (‘sports victory’ vs ‘societal problems’) and the concept of happiness (‘reticence to define happiness’ vs ‘secrets of Finnish happiness’). Readers agreeing with the World Happiness Report define Finland as an ‘almost utopia’ while readers disagreeing with the World Happiness Report, in addition to presenting a reversed image of Finland (‘almost dystopia’), further justify their distrust towards the World Happiness Report by attacking the publication, its authors and the participants (Finns). Both actors carefully construct their understanding of happiness to fit their arguments aimed at the glorification/scandalization of the World Happiness Report.Peer reviewe

Aims in teaching history and their epistemic correlates: A study of history teachers in ten countries

In spite of the importance of the topic, there are few comparative studies of the aims of history teaching, even in Europe. Domain- specific epistemic beliefs are relevant for understanding the teach- ing and learning of history and the development of deliberative thought. We studied epistemic beliefs in the context of the gen- eral aims of history teaching. The respondents were 633 history teachers from ten countries (Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands and Serbia) who rated the importance of 12 specified teaching aims and responded to four claims regarding epistemic beliefs. Three meaningful clus- ters of teaching aims were identified: critical thinking and devel- opment; moral virtues and patriotism; and historical consciousness. History teachers in ten countries were classified within these clusters. There were significant differences among the clusters in terms of the three epistemic beliefs. The results are discussed in the contexts of the countries studied.Peer reviewe

Leader Fairness and Employees’ Trust in Coworkers: The Moderating Role of Leader Group Prototypicality

In this article, the association between perceived supervisor fairness and trust in coworkers as a collective entity is studied. Based on identity-related theories on fairness, trust and leader effectiveness it was hypothesized that perceived supervisor distributive, procedural and interactional fairness are positively and more strongly related to employee trust in their coworkers if the supervisor is highly group prototypical rather than less group prototypical. An empirical study, conducted with 176 employees within 30 work groups, supported this hypothesis. Fairness of a less group prototypical supervisor was not associated with trust in coworkers, whereas especially unfairness of the group prototypical supervisor was detrimental for trust in coworkers. The study concludes that leader’s prototypicality might not work as a substitute for fairness, as some recent studies have suggested, when the outcome is not directly related to the assessment of the leader. Thus, leaders should not count on the trust they earn by being group prototypical but they should also aim at fairness. Implications for collective distrust theory (Kramer, 1994; 1998) are also discussed.Peer reviewe

Personal epistemologies and social representations : And how they meet in people’s conceptions of the origin of human species

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A trust-focused model of leaders' fairness enactment

In this article, we present a trust-focused model for understanding leader’s fairness enactment. The model suggests that leaders are motivated to act fairly to gain subordinates’ trust, to show trust in their subordinates, to show that they are worth the subordinates’ trust in them, and because they are willing to be vulnerable to the actions of cooperative subordinates. The mediating role of the leader’s trust in the relationship between a subordinate’s cooperation and the leader’s fairness is also tested.Peer reviewe

Miten tutkia sosiaalisia representaatioita?

Sosiaalisten representaatioiden tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan tyypillisesti arkiymmärryksen muodostumista ja sisältöä ihmisille ajankohtaisista ja merkittävistä ilmiöistä kuten ilmastonmuutoksesta, luomuruoasta, Euroopan unionista tai erilaisista terveyteen ja sairauteen liittyvistä teemoista kuten mielenterveydestä, masennuksesta tai AIDSista. Lähestymistapa ohjaa kiinnittämään huomioita erilaisiin tiedonvälitys- ja kommunikaatiomuotoihin ja siihen, miten sosiaalinen konteksti, ryhmäjäsenyydet ja yhteisön historia vaikuttavat arkiymmärryksen syntyyn. Kyseessä on paradigma, jolla on omat vahvat tutkimusperinteensä ja runsas menetelmällinen arsenaali. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme, minkälaisia metodologisia edellytyksiä ja mahdollisuuksia sosiaalisten representaatioiden lähestymistapa asettaa tutkijalle. Esittelemme erilaisia aineistonkeruu- ja analyysimenetelmiä, jotka alan tutkimuksessa ovat vakiintuneita mutta anglosaksisessa tiedemaailmassa toistaiseksi melko vähän hyödynnettyjä, kuten sana-assosiaatiot ja visuaaliset aineistonkeruu- ja analyysitavat.Peer reviewe

Stigma, Marginalization and Psychosocial Wellbeing of Orphans in Rwanda : Exploring the Mediation Role of Social Support

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Social representations of trust among teachers and principals in Cameroonian, Indian, and Finnish schools

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Towards a Narrative Understanding of Victimhood : The Perception of Intergroup Conflicts in Light of Past Ingroup Victimization

The present study explores the role of linguistic compositional characteristics in transmitting collective victimhood beliefs. Experimentally manipulated excerpts of history textbooks were used to examine the perception of the victim position of national outgroups and its intermediary social psychological processes with Hungarian (N = 415) and Finnish (N = 116) participants. The results reveal that the narrative composition of the victimhood narrative had a significant effect on the perception of the target groups’ victimhood position. The evaluation of the groups changed according to which variant of the story was introduced. The results demonstrate that the perception of a perpetrator group can be changed purely by means of narrative construction and that their actions can acquire a “victim tone”. This effect is present in both the Hungarian and Finnish samples, suggesting that narrating an event of victimhood has certain universal characteristics, although their effect is partially dependent on the national-historical-cultural contexPeer reviewe

Sosiaaliset representaatiot : yhteisön ja mielen välinen silta

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