To Keep the Law or to Repeal It: Views of Parliamentarians On the Call to Decriminalise Attempted Suicide in Ghana

We explored the views of members of parliament (MPs) in Ghana on the call to decriminalise attempted suicide. We applied reflexive thematic analysis to Parliamentary Hansards (2017–2020) on calls to decriminalise attempted suicide in Ghana. 11 MPs shared their stance for or against the call. We developed three major themes that entailed, often, opposing views: (1) deterrent effect of the law (against: the law punishes and deters to protect life; for: the law is insensitive and has ironic effects), (2) enforcement of the law (against: leave things as they are, the law is not enforced, anyway; for: crime is not self-inflicted) and (3) prioritisation of suicide prevention (against: focus on more pressing issues, but resource support systems; for: the law and legitimate support systems cannot co-exist). The findings indicate two needs: to extend suicide literacy to Ghanaian MPs, and to initiate a public/private member’s bill on attempted suicide decriminalisation.

Winning the Battle but Losing the War: Ironic Effects of Training Consumers to Detect Deceptive Advertising Tactics

Misleading information pervades marketing communications, and is a long-standing issue in business ethics. Regulators place a heavy burden on consumers to detect misleading information, and a number of studies have shown training can improve their ability to do so. However, the possible side effects have largely gone unexamined. We provide evidence for one such side-effect, whereby training consumers to detect a specific tactic (illegitimate endorsers), leaves them more vulnerable to a second tactic included in the same ad (a restrictive qualifying footnote), relative to untrained controls. We update standard notions of persuasion knowledge using a goal systems approach that allows for multiple vigilance goals to explain such side-effects in terms of goal shielding, which is a generally adaptive process by which activation and/or fulfillment of a low-level goal inhibits alternative detection goals. Furthermore, the same goal systems logic is used to develop a more general form of training that activates a higher-level goal (general skepticism). This more general training improved detection of a broader set of tactics without the negative goal shielding side effect.

Meta-Analysis of the 'Ironic' Effects of Intergroup Contact

Growing evidence suggests that intergroup contact, psychology’s most-researched paradigm for reducing prejudice, has the ‘ironic’ effect of reducing support for social change in disadvantaged groups. We conducted a preregistered meta-analytic test of this effect across 98 studies with 140 samples of 213,085 disadvantaged-group members. As predicted, intergroup contact was, on average, associated with less perceived injustice (r = −.07), collective action (r = −.06), and support for reparative policies (r = −.07). However, these associations were small, variable, and consistent with alternative explanations. Across outcomes, 25–36% of studies found positive associations with intergroup contact. Moderator analyses explained about a third of the between-sample variance, showing that, on average, associations were negative only in studies of adults that measured intergroup contact directly and were strongest in studies that examined short-term migration or (post-)colonial intergroup relations. We also found evidence for an alternative explanation for the apparent ‘ironic’ effects of intergroup contact as, after controlling for the positive association of negative contact with support for social change, positive contact was no longer associated with any of the outcomes. We close by discussing strengths and limitations of the available evidence and by highlighting open questions about the relationship between intergroup contact and support for social change in disadvantaged groups.

Ironic Effects of Thought Suppression: A Meta-Analysis

The ironic effect of thought suppression refers to the phenomenon in which individuals trying to rid their mind of a target thought ironically experience greater levels of occurrence and accessibility of the thought compared with individuals who deliberately concentrate on the thought (Wegner, 1994, doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.1.34). Ironic effects occurring after thought suppression, also known as rebound effects, were consistently detected by previous meta-analyses. However, ironic effects that occur during thought suppression, also known as immediate enhancement effects, were found to be largely absent. In this meta-analysis, we test Wegner’s original proposition that detection of immediate enhancement effects depends on the cognitive load experienced by individuals when enacting thought suppression. Given that thought suppression is an effortful cognitive process, we propose that the introduction of additional cognitive load would compete for the allocation of existing cognitive resources and impair capacity for thought suppression. Studies ( k = 31) consistent with Wegner’s original thought-suppression paradigm were analyzed. Consistent with our predictions, rebound effects were observed regardless of cognitive load, whereas immediate enhancement effects were observed only in the presence of cognitive load. We discuss implications in light of ironic-process theory and suggest future thought-suppression research.

Free Indirect Speech in Northanger Abbey

The thesis mainly analyzes the Free Indirect Speech in Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey (Volume 2). When Austen describes Catherine’s feeling for Henry Tilney, it is difficult for us to distinguish the subjective consciousness of the narrator from the character. Their calm and objective tone is prone to arouse the resonance with the readers. Authorial narrator sometimes appears to explain the fate of Catherine. When Austen describes Catherine’s expedition to Northanger Abbey, the character has more prominent subjective consciousness, and readers can distance themselves from the character and examine Catherine’s ridiculous and irrational behavior and feel the ironic effects. The thesis points out that Austen used this technique to portray Catherine, who was able to deal with her feeling for Henry reasonably, however, was influenced greatly by the Gothic novels at that time, and could not handle the relationship between reality and fiction very well.

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV’S IRONIC JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE: BASIC AUTHORIAL INTENTIONS AND THEIR IMPLEMENTATION IN THE PRINTED MEDIA TEXT

This article is devoted to the study of the ironic journalistic discourse used by Andrei Kolesnikov, a special correspondent for the newspaper «Kommersant». The research material includes printed journalist media texts created in the genre of an ironic report, A. Kolesnikov is one of the founders of this genre. The article considers irony as an obligatory element of many discourses, including journalism, as a way of journalist’s worldview. The key concept of the undertaken research is the concept of authorial intention proposed by N.I. Klushina. It is noted that three leading intentions of the main types of media discourse interact in a special way – information (information discourse), persuasion (journalistic discourse), entertainment (entertainment discourse) in the ironic journalistic discourse. The article emphasizes that the ideological dominants of these discourses in the ironic journalistic discourse interact forming symbiosis of information, worldview ideologies and entertaining, paradoxical facts. The article identifies and analyzes frequency language means and techniques for creating comic and ironic effects in the modern journalistic media text in general and in the texts by A. Kolesnikov in particular. The author proposes a methodology for studying the representation of intentional categories of interpretation, evaluativeness and tonality in media texts, draws conclusions about the influence and interaction of the basic intentions of media discourse and an ironic journalist’s authorial intentions as an established trend in modern journalistic discursive practices.