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This article addresses the need to grasp the actual processing of health ethical issues in ethics organisations by analysing the work of the Finnish National Advisory Board on Social Welfare and Health Care Ethics (ETENE). ETENE's ethics is approached ethigraphically: the advisory board enacts ethics in its social life, through its own norms and values. It is asked how this internal ethics is performed in the board practice and how ethical debate eventually becomes bounded in this practice. Based on the analysis of the board members' textual reflections and on‐site observations of board meetings, ETENE's ethics appears as a tandem of a particular discussion culture and multi‐perspectivity: mutual recognition and respect among board members are nurtured in the meetings, and a tactful mode of reflection is established throughout all terms of office. This shared discussion culture enables ETENE's forte—weighing multiple perspectives—by preventing asymmetries and avoiding merely technical decision‐making procedures. Consequently, ETENE's ethics is not threatened by being externally bounded and formalised but is at risk of watering down endogenously, through the notable tactfulness of its discussion mode, which threatens to attenuate both substantial debate and the social shaping of board members' values in the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article features data drawn from interviews with doctors working in the Finnish occupational health‐care system. These are used to explore the value of an Eliasian approach towards interpreting and assessing the moral meanings and social dynamics of relationships between health practitioners and their patients. We attend to spiralling 'formalizing' and 'informalizing' processes and how these are operating to reconfigure doctor–patient relationships. We document some of the ways in which Finnish doctors are adapting to these processes. While data drawn from a British context suggest both doctor and patients are inclined to adopt positions of mutual distrust and hostility, by contrast we note that in this Finnish setting more concerted attempts are being made to renegotiate social roles, cultural meanings and individual responsibilities. We propose that this can be taken as an instance where informalization is accompanied by revitalized currents of formalization and new syntheses of moral codes and conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we examine socio‐cultural and practical aspects of human papillomavirus vaccination (HPVV) through a multi‐sited study of framings. We ask how HPVV is framed in the daily lives of vaccination‐aged Finnish girls and in school nurses' everyday work. We then mirror these framings against both each other and Finland's official vaccination campaign. Based on analysis of interviews with 24 nurses and 12 girls and the campaign materials, we argue first that the campaign frames vaccination as an individual, knowledge‐based decision reflecting the informed consent principle. Second, however, the vaccination is framed in the everyday lives of eligible girls through gendered social ties and as a gendered and cohort‐specific event pivoting around the needle prick. Third, HPVV is not primarily framed in the school nurses' work as preparing the girls for the vaccination decision by sharing official information but through trust‐based social relationships with the girls and their parents. We conclude that, as the vaccination is not an issue of individually reflected and knowledge‐based decision‐making for the two interviewed key groups, the official Finnish HPVV campaign and the undergirding informed consent principle drift into problems in their practical implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross‐cultural study of Finnish and Chinese students set out to compare the levels of achievement motivation (AM) in order to investigate whether the differences in them might be explained by the different cultural response styles and whether these response styles could be controlled for with a method which includes response style variables as covariates in ANCOVA. This study also scrutinizes relationships between perceived teaching‐learning environments (TLE) and AM within each cultural group. The survey sample consisted of 3,035 Finnish and 2,309 mainland Chinese university students. Finnish students were found to rate the level of AM markedly higher than do Chinese students. It was determined that the method applied for response style controlling is not suitable for cross‐cultural studies, even though it is recommended for this use. A modification of the method, which is based on robust statistical tools, was found not to change this conclusion, but it can nevertheless be used to obtain useful information about the effects of response style differences. The results also show that similar relationships between AM and TLE could be identified in the data of both groups. However, for the Finnish group AM is related to perceived suitable workload, whereas for the Chinese group it is related to teacher encouragement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role does national identity play after civil war? Is reconstruction possible on the basis of an existing identity, or does a new identity have to be found? Much depends on whether narratives of conflict are unifying. I use the tools of cultural sociology to explain why the Finnish Civil War of 1918 has become a unifying 'cultural trauma' for the Finns, whereas the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 never became the dominant referent in Irish national identity. The difference is explained by the greater shock civil war posed to Finnish national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study illustrates the huge untapped potential of quantifying the impact of culture in making meaningful comparisons across groups. Our focus is on cross‐national differences in nurses' reports of their relations with physicians, and how the measurement of this complex construct and the evaluation of true differences are related to dimensions of national culture. Design: We examine across 14 European countries the association between indices of national culture from the seminal work of Hofstede and 39,435 nurses' ratings of their relations with physicians. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate strong factorial invariance across countries and to examine the influence of power distance and masculinity. Findings: There was wide variation across countries in nurses' reports of their relations with physicians. Strong factorial invariance was shown for a one‐factor model, which confirmed that across countries the seven survey items measure a common factor of physician‐nurse relations. This model showed no country bias for any of the seven survey items, which suggests that differences across countries reflect true differences. These true differences were significantly associated with variation in country values of power distance, which showed a significant negative correlation with physician–nurse relations. Conclusions: Continuously pursuing a better understanding of characteristics that impact the studied indicators, such as national culture, is elementary to better understand the construct under study. In this application, country values of power distance negatively impacted nurse‐reported relations with physicians, which strongly varied across countries. Clinical Relevance: Better nurse‐reported relations between nurses and physicians link to higher nurse job satisfaction, lower emotional exhaustion, better nurse‐perceived quality of care, and lower patient mortality. The Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index is an excellent instrument to characterize variation in working relations between nurses and physicians as well as physicians' professional posture towards nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the study was to analyze and compare elderly care personnel attitudes toward care robots in Finland and Japan. Design: Cross‐sectional survey in Finland and Japan. Methods: The Finnish sample was collected from care personnel in home care facilities in five municipalities in 2016. The Japanese sample was collected from personnel in two rehabilitative day centers and three residential care homes for the elderly in the north of Honshu Island in 2017. The data were analyzed using basic statistical methods and calculated descriptive statistics (frequencies). Differences between the Finnish and Japanese data have been analyzed using the Mann‐Whitney U test. Findings: Overall, Japanese care personnel assessed the usefulness of robots more positively than did their Finnish counterparts. The data showed substantial national differences in the perceived importance of various potential tasks for care robots. The findings show that there are also certain fears related to the introduction of care robots, in particular among the Finnish care personnel. Discussion: The data from the Japanese care personnel bring new perspectives to the concept of a close human–robot relationship. The differences seen in the results between Finland and Japan can be partly explained by cultural dissimilarity, but it is also known that Japan is a more developed country with regard to the use of robotics in nursing care. The research highlights the importance of cultural factors when examining the issue of care robotics. The factors affecting fear are a concern that care robots would be used to replace people, the dehumanization of treatment, and an increased loneliness in the elderly. Thus, further research is required to demonstrate the relationship between different cultural factors, and attitudes and conceptions toward care robots. Clinical Relevance: Management plays a key role when implementing robotics. It is important to help care personnel accept care robots, and to diminish any fears that their introduction would make the treatment of elderly people inhumane or in some way add to their loneliness. As such, education is crucial in changing attitudes and making care personnel understand that care robots can perform routine tasks, allowing care personnel to focus on providing improved care and nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparative study of the discursive construction and use of Otherness among anti-immigration populist radical right politicians in Sweden and Finland. Based on rhetorical and critical discursive psychology, our analyses of discourse within nine political blogs identified three distinct representations of Otherness. These representations of a deviant group of people, of a threatening ideology and of inner enemies are highly familiar from previous research on radical right discourse. However, what seems to characterize populist radical right discourse in the Nordic context is the strong reliance on the rhetorical juxtaposition between the welfare system and immigration. Our study furthermore highlights how populist radical right politicians exploit the digital discursive tools provided by political blogging. These tools, first, create a sense of connectedness and mutual understanding between blogger and reader and, second, allow the blogger to convey messages that are hostile towards immigrants and ethnic minorities without expressing an explicit personal opinion. In combination, the features provided by political blogging and the discursive and rhetorical strategies that deny racism make discourse within a populist radical right political blog especially powerful and convincing. We conclude that research must be sensitive to this 'digital discourse', as it reaches a public far beyond the sphere of a political blog through its potential to spread and influence mainstream media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the activities of a municipal children's parliament (the TCP) in a middle‐sized Finnish town. The article focuses on members of the TCP board and their parents and the emphasis is on parents' views as very little research exists on family background in relation to children's public participation. All the participating families were middle‐class, both as self‐defined and according to their socioeconomic background. The parents studied detailed different emotions they and their children experienced as members of the children's parliament. The article illustrates that being a middle‐class child and participating in civic activities is not an uncomplicated description of privilege. Children and parents engaged in the TCP board displayed three distinct strategies, to interpret and support engagement in the structure; as hobbyists, school‐oriented or ambivalently engaged. They had to cope with feelings of pressure and stress over workload and the conflict between having peer‐related problems in school versus the future civic competencies and advantages held out to TCP office holders. The article extends the understanding of participation to include discussion of social class and emotions and calls for further research on these themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intuitive thinking is known to predict paranormal beliefs, but the processes underlying this relationship, and the role of other thinking dispositions, have remained unclear. Study 1 showed that while an intuitive style increased and a reflective disposition counteracted paranormal beliefs, the ontological confusions suggested to underlie paranormal beliefs were predicted by individual differences in involuntary inhibitory processes. When the reasoning system was subjected to cognitive load, the ontological confusions increased, lost their relationship with paranormal beliefs, and their relationship with weaker inhibition was strongly accentuated. These findings support the argument that the confusions are mainly intuitive and that they therefore are most discernible under conditions in which inhibition is impaired, that is, when thinking is dominated by intuitive processing. Study 2 replicated the findings on intuitive and reflective thinking and paranormal beliefs. In Study 2, ontological confusions were also related to the same thinking styles as paranormal beliefs. The results support a model in which both intuitive and non-reflective thinking styles and involuntary inhibitory processes give way to embracing culturally acquired paranormal beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gaias, L. M., Räikkönen, K., Komsi, N., Gartstein, M. A., Fisher, P. A. & Putnam, S. P. (2012). Cross-cultural temperamental differences in infants, children, and adults in the United States of America and Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 119-128. Cross-cultural differences in temperament were investigated between infants ( n = 131, 84 Finns), children ( n = 653, 427 Finns), and adults ( n = 759, 538 Finns) from the United States of America and Finland. Participants from both cultures completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, Childhood Behavior Questionnaire and the Adult Temperament Questionnaire. Across all ages, Americans received higher ratings on temperamental fearfulness than Finnish individuals, and also demonstrated higher levels of other negative affects at several time points. During infancy and adulthood, Finns tended to score higher on positive affect and elements of temperamental effortful control. Gender differences consistent with prior studies emerged cross-culturally, and were found to be more pronounced in the US during childhood and in Finland during adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing world of work is increasing demands on workers through greater need for flexibility in global collaboration. This multiple-case study uses a qualitative research approach to study context-specific job stressors and coping in ten geographically distributed work teams. Results demonstrate the complex and dynamic nature of the stress-coping process and how coping strategies, adapted to manage stress-evoking uncertainty and ambiguity in distributed work, created secondary sources of psychological strain to individuals. The main strategies for managing the uncertainty and ambiguity in the studied teams were extensive emailing, travelling to face-to-face meetings and extending workdays to collaborate simultaneously across time zones. Continuously used, these coping strategies created work overload and strain. Experienced workers, who had good self-management skills, succeeded in coping with these secondary sources of strain by prioritizing and setting clear limits for workload. Less-experienced workers were overloaded and needed more social support from their leaders and teammates. The study proposes that distributed team members rely heavily on individual coping resources, because spatial and temporal distance hinders or even precludes the mobilization of social resources related to emotional, instrumental and informational social support. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]