Experience in Developing and Testing a Model Program for Psychological and Educational Work with Persons Convicted of Terrorist and Extremist Crimes

Introduction: the steady increase in the number of the suspected, accused and convicted of terrorism and extremism, as well as cases of their participation in various emergencies, necessitates a personal, targeted approach to correctional psychological and educational work with them. The need for an individual approach, including in psychological and educational work with those convicted of terrorism and extremism, is also indicated by regulatory legal documents, in particular the Order of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia No. 1111 dated November 24, 2017 “On the organization of events on countering terrorism, extremist activity in penal enforcement institutions and bodies”. Study purpose: determination of the effectiveness of the tested model program for psychological correction of personality of persons convicted of terrorism and extremism-related crimes. Research methods: psychodiagnostics methods: the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) “Time perspective of convicts”, multidimensional self-attitude research questionnaire, a psychodiagnostic method “Life-purpose orientations”; a method for testing the program developed; a method for identifying statistical differences – the Student’s t-test; a method for comparative analysis of the psychodiagnostics results obtained following the testing results. Results: validation of the reliability of statistical differences with the help of the Student’s t-test determined the absence of significant changes in the indicators of convicts in the control group. Meaningful changes were observed in the indicators of convicts of the experimental group with the help of the following methods: ZTPI “Time perspective of convicts”, a multidimensional self-attitude research questionnaire and a psychodiagnostic method “Life-purpose orientations”. A comparative analysis of the results of psychodiagnostics of convicts in the experimental group before and after testing of the basic program proved the reliability of statistical differences with the help of the Student’s t-test determined the presence of positive personality changes in the behavioral, cognitive and affective spheres of the personality of convicts in the experimental group. Conclusions: assessment of the model program testing results revealed a sufficient degree of its effectiveness and the possibility of its implementation. The model program largely determined the content and structure of the section of the additional professional program – a professional development program for psychological service employees who accompany persons convicted of terrorist and extremist crimes.

Καλημέρα, kalimera or kalhmera?

Although language attitudes are frequently investigated, how these attitudes change over time is studied less frequently, despite providing an interesting window into the link between attitudes and ideologies. Conducted some twenty years since the first studies on this topic, the current study provides an updated perspective into language attitudes toward the use of Roman-alphabeted Greek (henceforth, Greeklish) in emails and SMS messages exchanged between Greek native speakers. Adapting the matched guise methodology commonly used in language attitude research to visual stimuli, we collected data from 60 participants of different ages and genders. Overall, their attitudes toward Greeklish were markedly negative, confirming negative attitudes already expressed twenty years prior but also extending them. We propose that technological and demographic but also ideological factors underlie the negative attitudes toward Greeklish expressed by Greek native speakers today.

Commodification of The Mangalahat Horbo Bius Ritual on The Samosir Island North Sumatra: A Controversial Show

The mangalahat horbo bius ritual is a Batak tradition to offer the best sacrifice to God called Mulajadi na Bolon. This tradition is carried out since they still adhere to the parbaringin flow. The entry of Dutch colonialism into Tapanuli resulted in this tradition being a forbidden tradition. In 2008, the government of Samosir Regency raised this tradition as a show of its purpose as a tourist attraction. Since it was made into a show, there were pros and cons in the community. To explore this attitude research needs to be done. This study uses a qualitative method. The researcher chose the informant purposively followed by the snowball technique. Selected informants: government, religious leaders, and traditional leaders. Data analysis was carried out from the time the study began until the inductive analytic descriptive research results. Theories used as analysis: the theory of power/ knowledge discourse, postcolonial theory, commodification theory, and social practice theory. The theory is used eclectically. The results showed that this ritual performance was counterproductive in increasing the number of visits.

Public Attitudes

This chapter discusses developments in research on citizens’ attitudes towards the welfare state. The introduction briefly reminds the reader about older, and still vibrant, research traditions. From then on, however, the focus is on four distinct ‘new directions’ that became prominent recently and were only present on the fringe of the field a decade ago. One key development concerns conceptualizations and measures. A second, fast-growing literature deals with the consequences of ethnic diversity and immigration on welfare attitudes. A third literature examines whether demographic change has triggered intergenerational conflict in such attitudes. A fourth research programme concerns an increasing attention to the causes and effects of welfare state ‘performance evaluations’. Taken together, these subfields demonstrate how the broader field of welfare attitude research is responding to the significant welfare state challenges and changes documented elsewhere in this Handbook.

Attitude theory and measurement in implementation science: a secondary review of empirical studies and opportunities for advancement

Background Implementation science studies often express interest in “attitudes,” a term borrowed from psychology. In psychology, attitude research has an established methodological and theoretical base, which we briefly summarize here. We then review implementation studies designed to measure attitudes and compare their definitions and methods with those from psychology. Methods A recent review identified 46 studies empirically examining factors associated with implementation. For each of these studies, we evaluated whether authors included attitudes as a construct of interest, and if so, whether and how the construct was defined, measured, and analyzed. Results Most of the articles (29/46 [63%]) mention attitudes as an implementation factor. Six articles include a definition of the construct. Nineteen studies were designed to measure attitudes but lacked clarity in describing how attitudes were measured. Those that explained their measurement approach used methods that differed from one another and from validated methods in social psychology. Few articles described associated analyses or provided results specific to attitudes. Despite the lack of specificity regarding relevant measurement, analysis, and results, the articles often included causal conclusions about the role of attitudes. Conclusions Attitudes may be an important construct to implementation scientists, but studies to date are ambiguous in their definitions of attitudes and inconsistent in the methods used to measure and analyze attitudes. We discuss how implementation studies can apply psychology’s standardized definitions, validated measurement approaches, and causal models that include attitudes. This application of attitude theory and methods could offer implementation research valuable scientific opportunities.

Latent Attitude Method for Trend Analysis with Pooled Survey Data

Millions of people are surveyed every year regarding their attitudes toward various topics. Together these surveys have produced a large corps of data that document how people think collectively toward various aspects of contemporary social life.The wealth of the attitude surveys has promoted scholars to move beyond the single-survey analysis. However, the use of survey data for studying trends in attitudes is handicapped by a measurement difficulty: different surveys have used different survey instruments to measure the same attitude and thus have generated data that strictly non-comparable. We propose the Latent Attitude Method (LAM) to address this issue. Our method borrows strength from two research traditions: (1) the latent variable method in attitude research and (2) the comparable distribution condition in survey design and evaluation. The core of this method is that, when two or more surveys overlap in a given year, we assume that the same latent attitude is measured as if two measurement scales are randomly given to two independent samples drawn from the same population. Thus, we can assume the same statistical properties for the latent attitude. In so doing, we are able to reduce the number of unknowns to be less than the number of established equations and estimate the best-fit parameters with maximum likelihood method. We demonstrate the utility of the method with simulated data, and apply the method to an empirical example of estimating America’s attitude toward China from 1974 to 2019.

Attitudinal research into Caribbean Englishes

Language attitude research is crucial for a deeper understanding of New Englishes. However, the most common attitude research methods often cause problems when applied to New Englishes contexts. We discuss the benefits and challenges of different methods used in two attitude studies on the perception of linguistic variation in Jamaica and Trinidad. Five major issues arise out of the discussion: the careful consideration of abstract labels, the need for contextualized research and authentic source material, the limited view of written data collection with closed questions, the crucial role of the researcher, and the opportunities of mixed-methods research. These conclusions are particularly relevant for research on New Englishes but also for language attitude research in general.

The Four Deadly Sins of Implicit Attitude Research

In this article, we describe four theoretical and methodological problems that have impeded implicit attitude research and the popular understanding of its findings. The problems all revolve around assumptions made about the relationships among measures (indirect vs. versus direct), constructs (implicit vs. explicit attitudes), cognitive processes (e.g., associative vs. propositional), and features of processing (automatic vs. controlled). These assumptions have confused our understandings of exactly what we are measuring, the processes that produce implicit evaluations, the meaning of differences in implicit evaluations across people and contexts, the meaning of changes in implicit evaluations in response to intervention, and how implicit evaluations predict behavior. We describe formal modeling as one means to address these problems, and provide illustrative examples. Clarifying these issues has important implications for our understanding of who has particular implicit evaluations and why, when those evaluations are likely to be particularly problematic, how we might best try to change them, and what interventions are best suited to minimize the effects of implicit evaluations on behavior.

Let’s not be indifferent about robots: Neutral ratings on bipolar measures mask ambivalence in attitudes towards robots

Ambivalence, the simultaneous experience of both positive and negative feelings about one and the same attitude object, has been investigated within psychological attitude research for decades. Ambivalence is interpreted as an attitudinal conflict with distinct affective, behavioral, and cognitive consequences. In social psychological research, it has been shown that ambivalence is sometimes confused with neutrality due to the use of measures that cannot distinguish between neutrality and ambivalence. Likewise, in social robotics research the attitudes of users are often characterized as neutral. We assume that this is due to the fact that existing research regarding attitudes towards robots lacks the opportunity to measure ambivalence. In the current experiment (N = 45), we show that a neutral and a robot stimulus were evaluated equivalently when using a bipolar item, but evaluations differed greatly regarding self-reported ambivalence and arousal. This points to attitudes towards robots being in fact highly ambivalent, although they might appear neutral depending on the measurement method. To gain valid insights into people’s attitudes towards robots, positive and negative evaluations of robots should be measured separately, providing participants with measures to express evaluative conflict instead of administering bipolar items. Acknowledging the role of ambivalence in attitude research focusing on robots has the potential to deepen our understanding of users’ attitudes and their potential evaluative conflicts, and thus improve predictions of behavior from attitudes towards robots.

A critical assessment of the construct of attitude in sociolinguistics: A socio-psychological insight (Part 2)

The present article constitutes the second part of a brief critical analysis of the research on attitude and attitude-(speech) behaviour relations. Its major aim is to show that the contribution from the socio-psychological paradigm can prove relevant and valuable when applied to sociolinguistic research on attitude and attitude-behaviour relations. The author argues that attitudinal investigations in sociolinguistics, despite their popularity and rich history, frequently suffer from a number of methodological and theoretical flaws. The author advances an argument that a reconceptualization of the construct of attitude and some additional methodological principles can help refine the whole paradigm of language attitude research. Specifically, it is pointed out that a cognitive/information-processing approach to attitude formation, the theory of planned behaviour and other theoretical and methodological insights discussed in this paper can prove immensely rewarding and can give a new impetus for further research.