Nationalist Backlash Against Foreign Climate Shaming

Should international pro-climate actors speak up against climate rogues, or do foreign critics risk igniting nationalist backlash against global environmental norms and institutions? We explore naming and shaming dynamics in global climate politics by fielding survey experiments to nationally representative samples in Brazil. Our results show that nationalism moderates public reactions to foreign climate shaming: individuals who are highly attached to their nation are more likely to reject international criticism than their lowly attached peers. Yet, we also find that nationalist publics express little support for virulent defiance against foreign critics. Our findings hold irrespective of the source of criticism and the nature of the critical message. These results sound a cautionary note on the belief that liberal internationalists should tread carefully so as not to unadvisedly unleash nationalist pushback. Foreign climate criticism may bump up against nationalist sentiment in climate rogues, but it will not necessarily fuel an all-out backlash against the global environmental regime.

Should Language Acquisition Researchers Study “Grit”? A Cautionary Note and Some Suggestions

Grit is theoretically defined as the combination of perseverance and passion for long term goals. Both of these constructs are likely to be relevant for our understanding of how language acquisition occurs and for explaining between-person differences in the rate of language acquisition. Despite this relevance, there are methodological and theoretical reasons why language acquisition researchers should be cautious about studying “grit” as a construct that is predictive of or causally related to language acquisition. In this paper we discuss some of these reasons, with a specific focus on the problems associated with the aggregation of perseverance and passion into a single variable, and the lack of predictive validity for other important life outcomes. We also discuss and describe with examples other challenges involved in studying grit, passion, or perseverance. Finally, we offer suggestions for some potentially more fruitful ways in which perseverance and passion for long-term goals may be integrated into research on second/foreign language acquisition. For example, we discuss how the measurement of grit facets may need to be revised to be better aligned with the “persisting despite initial failure” theoretical definition of perseverance, and to also balance the negatively-worded and positively-worded item content of the scales. We also discuss how an examination of necessary-but-not-sufficient relationships between grit facets and language acquisition using Dul’s (2016) methodology may be particularly valuable. That is, perseverance and passion may both be required for successful language acquisition but be insufficient on their own because other variables also need to be present (e.g., opportunity to practice, feedback).

A Guideline and Cautionary Note: How to Use the Belief Update Task Correctly

In 2011 we published a paper showing that people update their beliefs to a greater extent in response to good news (e.g., learning that the likelihood of robbery is lower than expected) than bad news (e.g., learning it is lower than expected) (Sharot et al., 2011). This phenomenon, which can lead to increased optimistic beliefs, is absent in depression. Since then, our belief update task has been used by many others to test a wide range of questions related to belief formation and optimism. Most of these studies are rigorous and well conducted. However, a small number of researchers have used the task inappropriately, inserting new confounds and failing to control for other potential ones. This has resulted in the report of false findings which have muddied the literature and caused confusion. Given these incidents and the enthusiasm for using the task across different disciplines, the need for guidelines on how to use the belief update task correctly has become apparent. The belief update task can be a helpful tool in studying beliefs in domains ranging from climate change to health, but like any other task it must be used properly if valid conclusions are to be reached. We hope this guide will be helpful for scientists who would like to use the belief update task, as well as readers, reviewers and editors who are required to evaluate studies using this task.

Transformative Branding: A Dynamic Capability To Challenge The Dominant Social Paradigm

In response to calls by macromarketing scholars, this article introduces transformative branding to demonstrate how branding—a process traditionally conceptualised at the firm level to achieve marketing management outcomes—can contribute to both market and societal systems. We define transformative branding as a dynamic capability deployed by firms as a prosocial process to facilitate stakeholder co-created brand meanings that draw on hybrid market and social logics. We contend that transformative branding encompasses two market-shaping activities, which drive macro-level change according to hybrid logics: (1) leadership i.e., building a vision for transformation and (2) collaborative coupling i.e., implementing transformation with stakeholders. Shaping the market and society in this way creates opportunities for transforming economic, regulatory, socio-cultural, and political environments, whereby transformative branding works to challenge the dominant social paradigm from within the market system. We conclude with a cautionary note about the potential of branding as a force for good.