Women in (Em)Power: A Qualitative Study of Orthodox Women Principals

The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of Orthodox Jewish women who occupy the role of school principal in Orthodox Jewish schools. What distinguishes these individuals is that they are accomplished females who, in addition to overcoming the common challenges of women in leadership positions, as Orthodox Jews, their environments, both the ones they were raised in and the ones they currently work in, create a distinct expectation of gender roles, cultural identity and leadership characteristics. Additionally, this study explores how the shaping of their gender, cultural and leadership identities continue to manifest themselves and impact the way these women interact in their professional roles within that same community. There is currently not enough research about the experiences of Orthodox Jewish women in positions of leadership, which makes this such a valuable study. The present study contributes to our understanding of women’s leadership in Orthodox society through analyzing the life histories of five Jewish women school principals. The interviews have been analyzed from the perspectives of gender, cultural, and leadership theories. By interviewing these women, this study explores the experiences of Orthodox Jewish female principals and uncovers how they have created a space in a culturally/religiously acceptable way for fulfilling their job requirements

Differential Information Use for Near and Distant Decisions

a b s t r a c t Whether choosing a cell phone, a senator, or a kitchen appliance, consumers today quickly find themselves awash in information from commercials, magazines, and websites. Whereas some of this information is broad, decontextualized, and abstracted across multiple individuals and instances, other information is more closely tied to a single experience within one specific context. The present research asks: under what circumstances do people rely on abstracted averages, and when are they swayed by another individual's particular experience? Across three studies, we show that temporal distance increases the relative weight placed on aggregate vs. individualized information when participants are asked to choose between two sleeping pills, migraine medications, or kitchen appliances, and that this process impacts not only evaluation but also willingness to pay and choice. Potential implications for evaluation, decision-making, and base-rate utilization are discussed

Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving under Stress

High levels of acute and chronic stress are known to impair problem-solving and creativity on a broad range of tasks. Despite this evidence, we know little about protective factors for mitigating the deleterious effects of stress on problem-solving. Building on previous research showing that self-affirmation can buffer stress, we tested whether an experimental manipulation of self-affirmation improves problem-solving performance in chronically stressed participants. Eighty undergraduates indicated their perceived chronic stress over the previous month and were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation or control condition. They then completed 30 difficult remote associate problem-solving items under time pressure in front of an evaluator. Results showed that self-affirmation improved problem-solving performance in underperforming chronically stressed individuals. This research suggests a novel means for boosting problem-solving under stress and may have important implications for understanding how self-affirmation boosts academic achievement in school settings. © 2013 Creswell et al

Stripped of illusions? Exploring system justification processes in Capitalist and post-Communist societies

Sociologists and political scientists have often observed that citizens of Central and Eastern Europe express high levels of disillusionment with their social, economic and political systems, in comparison with citizens of Western capitalist societies. In this review, we analyze system legitimation and delegitimation in post-Communist societies from a social psychological perspective. We draw on system justification theory, which seeks to understand how, when and why people do (and do not) defend, bolster and justify existing social systems. We review some of the major tenets and findings of the theory and compare research on system-justifying beliefs and ideologies in traditionally Capitalist and post-Communist countries to determine: (1) whether there are robust differences in the degree of system justification in post-Communist and Capitalist societies, and (2) the extent to which hypotheses derived from system justification theory receive support in the post-Communist context. To this end, we summarize research findings from over 20 countries and cite previously unpublished data from a public opinion survey conducted in Poland. Our analysis confirms that there are lower levels of system justification in post-Communist countries. At the same time, we find that system justification possesses similar social and psychological antecedents, manifestations and consequences in the two types of societies. We offer potential explanations for these somewhat complicated patterns of results and conclude by addressing implications for theory and research on system justification and system change (or transition)

Self-affirmation improves performance on tasks related to executive functioning

Objectives: The current study explored the effect of self-affirmation on two aspects of performance that have been related to executive functioning: working memory (assessed by a 2-back task) and inhibition (assessed by a Stroop task). The goal was to establish whether self-affirmation improved performance on these tasks. Method: Participants (N = 83) were randomized to either a self-affirmation or a control task and then completed the computerized tasks, in a fixed sequence. Results: Self-affirmed participants performed better than non-affirmed participants on both tasks. Conclusion: Self-affirmation can improve aspects of performance related to executive functioning. This finding may help to explain the wide range of beneficial effects that self-affirmation can have on cognition and behavior

Common Sense Beliefs About The Central Self, Moral Character, And The Brain

To assess lay beliefs about self and brain, we probed people\u27s opinions about the central self, in relation to morality, willful control, and brain relevance. In study 1, 172 participants compared the central self to the peripheral self. The central self, construed at this abstract level, was seen as more brain-based than the peripheral self, less changeable through willful control, and yet more indicative of moral character. In study 2, 210 participants described 18 specific personality traits on 6 dimensions: centrality to self, moral relevance, willful control, brain dependence, temporal stability, and desirability. Consistent with Study 1, centrality to the self, construed at this more concrete level, was positively correlated to brain dependence. Centrality to the self was also correlated to desirability and temporal stability, but not to morality or willful control. We discuss differences and similarities between abstract (Study 1) and concrete (Study 2) levels of construal of the central self, and conclude that in contemporary American society people readily embrace the brain as the underlying substrate of who they truly are

Turning I into me: Imagining your future self.

A widely endorsed belief is that perceivers imagine their present selves using a different representational format than imagining their future selves (i.e., near future=first-person; distant future=third-person). But is this really the case? Responding to the paucity of work on this topic, here we considered how temporal distance influences the extent to which individuals direct their attention outward or inward during a brief imaginary episode. Using a non-verbal measure of visual perspective taking (i.e., letter-drawing task) our results confirmed the hypothesized relation between temporal distance and conceptions of the self. Whereas simulations of an event in the near future were dominated by a first-person representation of the self, this switched to a third-person depiction when the event was located in the distant future. Critically, this switch in vantage point was restricted to self-related simulations. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered

Neither fair nor unchangeable but part of the natural order: orientations towards inequality in the face of criticism of the economic system

The magnitude of climate change threats to life on the planet is not matched by the level of current mitigation strategies. To contribute to our understanding of inaction in the face of climate change, the reported study draws upon the pro status quo motivations encapsulated within System Justification Theory. In an online questionnaire study, participants (N = 136) initially completed a measure of General System Justification. Participants in a “System-critical” condition were then exposed to information linking environmental problems to the current economic system; participants in a Control condition were exposed to information unrelated to either environmental problems or the economic system. A measure of Economic System Justification was subsequently administered. Regressions of Economic System Justification revealed interactions between General System Justification and Information Type: higher general system justifiers in the System-critical condition rated the economic system as less fair than did their counterparts in the Control condition. However, they also indicated inequality as more natural than did their counterparts in the Control condition. The groups did not differ in terms of beliefs about the economic system being open to change. The results are discussed in terms of how reassurance about the maintenance of the status quo may be bolstered by recourse to beliefs in a natural order

The effects of acute tryptophan depletion on costly information sampling: impulsivity or aversive processing?

RATIONALE: The neurotransmitter serotonin (5-HT) has been implicated in both aversive processing and impulsivity. Reconciling these accounts, recent studies have demonstrated that 5-HT is important for punishment-induced behavioural inhibition. These studies focused on situations where actions lead directly to punishments. However, decision-making often involves making tradeoffs between small 'local' costs and larger 'global' losses. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to distinguish whether 5-HT promotes avoidance of local losses, global losses, or both, in contrast to an overall effect on reflection impulsivity. We further examined the influence of individual differences in sub-clinical depression, anxiety and impulsivity on global and local loss avoidance. METHODS: Healthy volunteers (N = 21) underwent an acute tryptophan depletion procedure in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design. We measured global and local loss avoidance in a decision-making task where subjects could sample information at a small cost to avoid making incorrect decisions, which resulted in large losses. RESULTS: Tryptophan depletion removed the suppressive effects of small local costs on information sampling behaviour. Sub-clinical depressive symptoms produced effects on information sampling similar to (but independent from) those of tryptophan depletion. Dispositional anxiety was related to global loss avoidance. However, trait impulsivity was unrelated to information sampling. CONCLUSIONS: The current findings are consistent with recent theoretical work that characterises 5-HT as pruning a tree of potential decisions, eliminating options expected to lead to aversive outcomes. Our results extend this account by proposing that 5-HT promotes reflexive avoidance of relatively immediate aversive outcomes, potentially at the expense of more globally construed future losses

Self-prioritization and perceptual matching: The effects of temporal construal.

Recent research has revealed that self-referential processing enhances perceptual judgments - the so-called self-prioritization effect. The extent and origin of this effect remains unknown, however. Noting the multifaceted nature of the self, here we hypothesized that temporal influences on self-construal (i.e., past/future-self continuity) may serve as an important determinant of stimulus prioritization. Specifically, as representations of the self increase in abstraction as a function of temporal distance (i.e., distance from now), self-prioritization may only emerge when stimuli are associated with the current self. The results of three experiments supported this prediction. Self-relevance only enhanced performance in a standard perceptual-matching task when stimuli (i.e., geometric shapes) were connected with the current self; representations of the self in the future (Expts. 1 & 2) and past (Expt. 3) failed to facilitate decision making. To identify the processes underlying task performance, data were interrogated using a hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) approach. Results of these analyses revealed that self-prioritization was underpinned by a stimulus bias (i.e., rate of information uptake). Collectively, these findings elucidate when and how self-relevance influences decisional processing