“Why I quit journalism:” Former journalists’ advice giving as a way to regain control

This study offers a metajournalistic discourse analysis of first-person narratives by former journalists who quit the profession. It finds the former journalists felt powerless while in the industry. They expressed this by writing about feelings of being stuck in their “dream job,” haunted by an always-on mentality, strained mentally overall, and unsupported by the industry and colleagues. This article argues that with these texts, the former journalists regained a sense of power over the industry by offering advice to other journalists about leaving the industry. As with any profession, advice giving in journalism has always occurred in myriad interpersonal settings with a variety of actors, from educators to colleagues to friends. Mediated advice would occur within the relatively restricted realm of journalism trade press. Yet self-publishing digital platforms provide public outlets for advice giving, including to former journalists who have lost their news platform for speaking to the public.

Turning Tables: Offenders Feel Like “Victims” When Victims Withhold Forgiveness

When offenders apologize to victims for a wrongdoing, they often expect forgiveness in return. Sometimes, however, victims may withhold forgiveness. Across four experimental studies, we find that offenders feel like “victims” when victims respond to their apologies with non-forgiveness. This can be explained by the fact that they interpret non-forgiveness as both a norm violation and a threat to their sense of power. Together, these mechanisms can account for the relationship between non-forgiveness and negative conciliatory sentiments in offenders. These effects of non-forgiveness emerge irrespective of whether the transgression is recalled (Study 1) or imagined (Studies 2-4). They are specific to non-forgiveness rather than a lack of explicit forgiveness (Study 3), and are not qualified by subtle prods for participants to take the victim’s perspective (Study 4). These findings demonstrate a destructive response pattern in offenders that warrants further attention.

Motives of Knife-Carrying among the Youth in Azerbaijan: In-Depth Interviews Among 27 Experts and 5 Knife-Carriers

Drawing on in-depth interviews with psychologists, criminologists, and sociologists ( n = 27), as well as five adolescents (aged between 15 and 17 years) with a history of knife-carrying in Azerbaijan, this study attempts to explore the motives for knife-carrying among the male youth. Using a phenomenological approach, the interviews found a set of mixed and interrelated factors as the key motivators of carrying a knife among male youth. The answers provided by members of both samples generally overlap, but each provides some unique insights as well. Experts argue that young men tend to suffer from poor socialization and fail academically, which forces them to seek companionship, status, and identity elsewhere. In such circumstances, adolescents become likely to fall under the influence of their peers, as well as the criminal world whose figures are widely popular in the country. Since knife-carrying provides a sense of power and self-esteem, as well as constitutes a core attribute of notorious criminal figures, it becomes attractive to the youth. Male interviewees with a history of knife-carrying, all with irregular class attendance and part of “circles” (deviant peer groups), were attracted to sharp objects (a) by their ability to project power to others around them, such as so-called “predators” and (b) rule of the circles. The desire to exercise informal control over an area (school or neighborhood) and emulate thieves-in-law was particularly critical in shaping adolescents’ decision to carry knives and five-knuckle. The findings not only largely confirm the results reported by the Western studies, but also advance our understanding of youth's inclination towards knife-carrying in a nonwestern society.

Influence of sense of power on epidemic control policy compliance

Incidences of noncompliance with COVID-19 prevention and control policies have occurred worldwide, increasing the risk to public safety and making epidemic control more difficult. We applied the approach–inhibition theory of power perception to investigate the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationship between individuals' power perception and their prevention and control policy compliance. This study collected data from 303 participants in 45 counties (districts) spanning one province in China. Results show that individuals' sense of power was negatively related to their prevention and control policy compliance, with risk perception mediating and group policy control moderating this relationship. The findings provide a reference for assessing the effectiveness and relevance of government epidemic prevention and control. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The Effect of Social Class on the Linguistic Behavior of Saudi Female Employees at Al-Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University

This study aimed to investigate how the linguistic behaviors of Saudi female employees at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University index their social class identity. The study used a holistic case with embedded units design. The researchers carried out interviews to collect the data. The interview questions were validated by eight EFL university professors. Besides, the discourse analysis was discussed based on the ethnography of communicative approach and the interactional sociolinguistics approach. The data analysis revealed that the linguistic behavior of the Saudi female employees yielded variant extents of indexation to their social class identity in terms of self-esteem, prestige, and power. The results proved that the linguistic behavior of the professors indexed their high-class identity in terms of their high level of self-esteem, high level of prestigious state, and high level of possessing power emotions. In addition, the linguistic behavior of the security employees indexed only two phases of their middle-class identity which were unsuccessful attempts to be prestigious speakers and their moderate sense of power. Finally, the indexation of the workers’ identity as low-class speakers was manifested in their linguistic behavior in terms of the low level of self-esteem and lack of power possession emotions.

Power Decreases Loneliness through Enhanced Social Support: The Moderating Role of Social Exclusion

En los últimos años, el poder y la soledad son dos temas importantes de investigación en psicología social. Sin embargo, están en ramas separadas de literatura a pesar de la relación potencial. Para llenar este vacío, esta investigación investiga sistemáticamente cómo, por qué y cuándo el sentido de poder afecta la soledad examinando el efecto principal, el papel mediador del apoyo social percibido y el papel moderador de la exclusión social. En el Estudio 1, 539 participantes en China participaron en un estudio de encuesta, que incluyó la Escala de Sentido de Poder, la Escala de Apoyo Social Percibido y la Escala de Soledad de UCLA. En el Estudio 2, probamos casualmente los efectos principales y moderadores en un experimento controlado utilizando una muestra de los Estados Unidos. Tomados en conjunto, los resultados muestran que: (1) El sentido de poder reduce la soledad. (2) El apoyo social percibido media esta relación, de modo que el poder fortalece el apoyo social percibido y, por lo tanto, disminuye la soledad. (3) La exclusión social modera esta relación, de modo que la función de amortiguamiento del poder es efectiva sólo cuando la exclusión social está ausente. In recent years, power and loneliness are two important research topics in social psychology. However, they are in separate streams of literature despite the potential relationship. To fill this gap, this research systematically investigates how, why, and when sense of power affects loneliness by examining the main effect, the mediating role of perceived social support, and the moderating role of social exclusion. In Study 1, 539 participants in China participated in a survey study, which included Sense of Power Scale, Perceived Social Support Scale, and UCLA Loneliness Scale. In Study 2, we casually tested the main and moderating effects in a controlled experiment using a sample from the United States. Taken together, the results show that: (1) Sense of power reduces loneliness. (2) Perceived social support mediates this relationship, such that power enhances perceived social support and thereby decreases loneliness. (3) Social exclusion moderates this relationship, such that the buffering function of power is effective only when social exclusion is absent.

The Influence of Infectious Disease Cues on Purchase Intention for Environmentally Friendly Products

Consumers often come across cues of infectious disease in daily life, such as diners coughing in restaurants, commuters sneezing on the bus, or recent news reports about the spread of infectious diseases. In this study, four experiments were conducted to explore the role of infectious disease cues on consumers’ purchase intention for environmentally friendly products (eco-friendly products), as well as the moderating effects of consumers’ sense of power and anti-disease intervention. According to the results, infectious disease cues enhance consumers’ intent to purchase eco-friendly products, and perceived uncertainty and need to belong played a chain-mediated role in the relationship between infectious disease cues and this purchase intention. Consumers’ sense of power moderated the relationship between infectious disease cues and purchase intention. The purchase intention of consumers with a low sense of power (vs. high sense of power) was significantly enhanced when the infectious disease cues were highlighted. Anti-disease interventions also have a moderating effect on the relationship between infectious disease cues and purchase intention. When anti-disease intervention (such as wearing an anti-bacterial mask against airborne diseases) was adopted, consumers’ willingness to purchase eco-friendly products decreased.