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Most countries have been struggling with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic imposing social isolation on their citizens. However, this measure carried risks for people's mental health. This study evaluated the psychological repercussions of objective isolation in 1,006 Italians during the first, especially strict, lockdown in spring 2020. Although varying for the regional spread-rate of the contagion, results showed that the longer the isolation and the less adequate the physical space where people were isolated, the worse the mental health (e.g., depression). Offline social contacts buffered the association between social isolation and mental health. However, when offline contacts were limited, online contacts seemed crucial in protecting mental health. The findings inform about the potential downsides of the massive social isolation imposed by COVID-19 spread, highlighting possible risk factors and resources to account for implementing such isolation measures. Specifically, besides some known factors such as physical space availability, the local contagion rate is critical in moderating the link between social isolation and mental health issues, supporting national policies implementing regional tiers of restriction severity.

This article is a review of recent contributions in critical psychology, and its close cousins, critical social psychology, critical community psychology and liberation psychology, to understandings of the human response to climate change. It contrasts critical psychology with mainstream psychology in general terms, before introducing a critical psychological perspective on climate change. Central to this perspective is a critique of the framing of individual behaviour change as the problem and solution to climate change in mainstream psychology, and a related emphasis on identifying ‘barriers’ to pro-environmental behaviour. This framework is argued to be reductive, obscuring or downplaying the influence of a range of factors in shaping predominant responses to climate change to date, including social context, discourse, power and affect. Currently, critical psychologies set out to study the relative contribution of these factors to (in)action on climate change. A related concern is how the psychological and emotional impacts of climate change impact unevenly on communities and individuals, depending on place-based, economic, geographic and cultural differences, and giving rises to experiences of injustice, inequality and disempowerment. Critical psychology does not assume these to be overriding or inevitable psychological and social responses, however. Critical psychologies also undertake research and inform interventions that highlight the role of collective understanding, activism, empowerment and resistance as the necessary foundations of a genuine shift towards sustainable societies.

The perception of time plays a fundamental role in the organisation of basic psychological processes, and as such may also influence migrants’ psychological wellbeing. This paper investigates the relationship between the perception of time and immigrants’ psychological adaptation (i.e., affective aspects of migration) based on a sample of 238 Ukrainians residing in Poland. To assess time perception, we drew primarily from time perspective theory, which defines time perspective as a measure of the degree to which individuals non-consciously construe the past, the present, and the future. Psychological adaptation was assessed, focusing on participants’ basic psychological needs satisfaction, their satisfaction with life, and their psychological condition. We observed a relatively strong negative relationship between negative past and fatalistic present time perspectives and psychological adaptation. Additionally, we found that a more balanced and less negative temporal profile was related to significantly better psychological adaptation of immigrants. We discuss these results in light of the cultural validity of time perspective theory, the destructive impact of negative time perspective on migrants’ psychological wellbeing, and the potential applications of time perspective-based therapy in integration interventions for immigrants.

Objective: Dating violence (DV) is a psychosocial problem which impacts the health and wellbeing of affected individuals. Many studies have reported a high prevalence and various determinants of DV; however, there is a gap of consolidated evidence on this problem. This umbrella review aimed to synthesize the current evidence on the prevalence and determinants of DV from systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Methods: We systematically searched ten major databases and additional sources to retrieve systematic reviews or meta-analyses reporting prevalence or determinants of DV, published as peer-reviewed journal articles in English language till October 13, 2019. We extracted and synthesized the findings, reported the prevalence of DV, and categorized the determinants of DV using the socioecological model. Results: We found 16 eligible systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Most of these studies were conducted in developed countries with a majority of adolescent and young adult participants. Studies reported varying prevalence of physical, sexual, psychological/emotional, and technology-assisted DV ranging from 0.1% to 57.5%, 0.1% to 64.6%, 4.2% to 97%, and 5.8% to 92%, respectively. The determinants of DV at different socioecological levels, including individual behavior, substance abuse, psychiatric conditions, experiencing violence and maltreatment; interpersonal factors like family and peer relationships; community and neighborhood characteristics; patriarchy, culture, and socioeconomic equalities were reported. Conclusions: These findings suggest a high burden of DV among young populations, who are vulnerable to various socioecological determinants of DV. Future research should examine how these factors influence DV and multi-level interventions should be adopted to address the same.

The neighborhoods that people live in contain a variety of features that color their everyday psychological experience. Whether they feel welcomed by their neighbors, the type of schools they can send their children to, and whether they can find a local job that pays them enough to afford a safe, comfortable home are all examples of ever-present factors that can influence people’s perception of the world and their place in it. Previous work has explored the degree to which individual characteristics, such as personal beliefs and social networks, are associated with judgments about whether society is fair and just. Here, we build upon this work by investigating if these judgments are also associated with the features of the neighborhoods that people live in. Specifically, we hypothesize that neighborhood diversity and socioeconomic indicators will relate to individual beliefs about fairness and social order. We test this hypothesis using two large, open datasets – the Attitudes, Identities, and Individual Differences study data, and the Opportunity Insights Neighborhood Characteristics by County data – and through multi-method modeling techniques. Our work can inform theories of individual perception of, and response to, societal inequity, as well as models of public opinion of social welfare policy.

Relational models of procedural justice propose that fair procedures from authorities communicate that one is an affirmed member of the society that they represent. Authorities who use principles of procedural justice are more likely to be seen as legitimate, increasing compliance and cooperation from the public. However, ensuring that authority decisions will be accepted is not necessarily a guaranteed outcome of employing fair procedures. The empirical evidence discussed here questions what drives perceptions of authority fairness and decision acceptance by considering how social identities shape fairness perceptions. We argue that understanding these processes is crucial for authorities dealing with complex intergroup-level mediations. We support these claims by presenting an experimental study conducted in the context of post-conflict relations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. We show that people with more negative outgroup attitudes saw restrictive police actions as fairer when these actions targeted the outgroup (versus ingroup), and more strongly preferred for facilitative police decisions concerning the ingroup (versus outgroup). In contrast, people with positive outgroup attitudes did not evaluate police decisions depending on their own community belonging. The findings suggest that the nature of intergroup relations is a relevant element in responses to authority decisions. We outline new directions to theoretical developments of how authorities can effectively serve social systems that they represent.

What is social pressure, and how could it be adaptive to conform to others’ expectations? Existing accounts highlight the importance of reputation and social sanctions. Yet, conformist behavior is multiply determined: sometimes, a person desires social regard, but at other times she feels obligated to behave a certain way, regardless of any reputational benefit—i.e. she feels a sense of should. We develop a formal model of this sense of should, beginning from a minimal set of biological premises: that the brain is predictive, that prediction error has a metabolic cost, and that metabolic costs are prospectively avoided. It follows that unpredictable environments impose metabolic costs, and in social environments these costs can be reduced by conforming to others’ expectations. We elaborate on a sense of should’s benefits and subjective experience, its likely developmental trajectory, and its relation to embodied mental inference. From this individualistic metabolic strategy, the emergent dynamics unify social phenomenon ranging from status quo biases, to communication and motivated cognition. We offer new solutions to long-studied problems (e.g. altruistic behavior), and show how compliance with arbitrary social practices is compelled without explicit sanctions. Social pressure may provide a foundation in individuals on which societies can be built.

Fan groups are communities which develop a shared identity around a specific topic or idea. Hentai fans identify as part of a group which celebrates a medium of illustrated or animated pornography. We examined the associations between hentai fan membership, feelings of ingroup identification, and perceptions of discrimination both toward themselves and other fan groups within the anime community. Hentai fans showed more liking toward other groups but feel more discrimination toward themselves as compared to non-hentai fans, who feel less liking toward other groups and feel less discrimination targeted at their own group. Additionally, hentai fans identify more as fans of hentai than non-hentai fans identify with their respective groups, including anime fans. We also found evidence supporting a serial mediation model wherein higher fandom identification leads to higher feelings of more positive attitudes in fan groups, while feelings of personal discrimination do not correlate with higher positive feelings of prejudice in fan groups. The implications of these results and future directions are also discussed.

Human social groups are central to social organization and pervasively impact interpersonal interactions. While immensely varied, all social groups can also be considered specific instantiations of a common and abstract ingroup-outgroup structure. How much of the power of human social groups stems from learned variation versus abstract commonality? I review evidence demonstrating that from early in development a wide range of intergroup phenomena, most prominently many ingroup biases, follow solely from simple membership in an abstract social collective. Such effects cannot be attributed to rich social learning and so: a) constrain theories seeking to explain or intervene on ingroup bias, and b) provide reason to think that our species is powerfully predisposed towards ingroup favoritism from early in development.

Emerging evidence suggests that arts-based programs are helpful in mental health treatment, however, the research has lacked a cohesive and compelling theoretical framework. This study explored how the psychological mechanisms involved in participating in a choir and a creative writing group relate to a social identity theoretical approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 choir members, and 23 creative writing group members at two time points. A thematic analysis revealed that the programs provided participants with a new group identity and renewed participants’ creative identities. These identities frame how the groups meet psychological needs (belonging, esteem, agency, purpose, and hedonic enjoyment) on both a collective and individual level, thus enhancing wellbeing. Challenges relating to attending and connecting with the group were also identified (experiences of identity incompatibility, anxiety, chronic pain, and practical barriers). These findings conceptualise how arts-based groups can develop empowered identities which provide pathways toward mental health recovery.

Background: Mass gatherings are well-documented for their public health risks, however, little research has examined their impact on mental health or focused on young people specifically. This study explores risk and protective factors for mental health at mass gatherings, with a particular focus on characterizing attendees with high levels of psychological distress and risk taking. Method: Data collection was conducted in situ at “Schoolies”, an annual informal week-long mass gathering of approximately 30,000 Australian school leavers. Participants were 812 attendees of Schoolies on the Gold Coast in 2015 or 2016 (74% aged 17 years old).Results: In both years, attendee mental health was found to be significantly better than population norms for their age-peers. Identification with the mass gathering predicted better mental health, and this relationship became stronger across the course of the mass gathering. Attendees with high levels of psychological distress were more likely to be male, socially isolated, impulsive, and in a friendship group where risk taking was normative. Conclusions: Mass gatherings may have a net benefit for attendee mental health, especially for those attendees who are subjectively committed to the event. However, a vulnerable subgroup of attendees requires targeted mental health support.

Though there are many views on the nature of wisdom, a common thread emerging in philosophical, folk, and scientific discourse is the importance of wise reflection or “reasoning” for sound judgment. In this chapter, we briefly highlight this common thread in historical perspectives on wisdom before moving on to discuss its further development through contemporary personality- and performance-oriented traditions in the empirical study of wisdom. These empirical traditions serve as forerunners to the recent methodological and experimental innovations in the study of wise reasoning. We detail the strengths and weaknesses of existing measures of wisdom, and the subsequent development and validation of the Situated Wise Reasoning Scale to address the limitations of previous approaches. We highlight work demonstrating the importance of the situation for measuring wise reasoning. Further, we address cultural differences in wise reasoning, and highlight ways to boost people’s propensity to reason wisely. Finally, we outline some of the theoretical and practical implications of wise reasoning for wisdom writ large.

In this chapter we explore how master narratives have ethical and moral implications, and how master narratives can provide a way for researchers to look at the intersections of culture, ethics, morality, and individual development. We make this case by advancing three propositions about the relation among master narratives, ethics, and morality: 1) Master narratives are fundamentally about ethics in that they outline and convey culturally held ideas about the nature of a good life; 2) While all master narratives are grounded in ethics, not all master narratives are moral; and 3) Despite proposition 2, master narratives can come to exert moral force. We first describe the master narrative framework, and then follow with a detailed discussion of the three propositions. Our intent is that this integration of master narratives with moral development will help researchers in both areas to think about their work in new ways.

As a result of the U.S. government’s involvement in Native American education, the current experiences of Native American college students are characterized by educational disparities. Higher education professionals are in an ideal position to meet the needs and interests of Native American students; however, most of the literature concerning this population takes a deficit approach. The present paper offers a reconceptualization of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model as an alternative framework for the experiences of Native American college students. In privileging historical and cultural factors, this reconceptualization demonstrates how transforming educational institutions could influence the experiences of Native American college students.

Identity research has proliferated in recent years creating a great need for theoretical clarity about the identity concept, and how to use this clarity to understand identities within specific contexts. The present article addresses this need by discussing theoretical aspects of identity development as they apply to another important, yet broad, developmental context: societies in transition. This article includes a brief background on identity research in developmental psychology, an introduction of key theoretical constructs of identity integration, and then finally application of these constructs to understanding identities in transition. The hope is that this theoretical discussion will stimulate further research on identity development in the context of individual and social transitions.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the ‘neo-homeless’ participants’ lived experiences in the shelters and the streets, within the context and the adversities of the economic crisis in Greece. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 participants (4 women and 2 men) at a municipal shelter in Athens, Greece. An Interpretative Phenomenological analysis was used to document their experiences and stories. Research findings revolved around the accounts and the negative effects of neo-homelesness such as detrimental personal consequences, stress, depression, depersonalization , a sense of hopelessness and lack of hope for the future. However, the participants spoke also about positive growth, a deeper apprehension of life’s meanings, and the mobilization of personal and interpersonal resources. ‘Neo-homelessness’ hardship in the shelter was incremental in the experiential conscientization and critical consciousness of the oppression of the social context of crisis and austerity. Implications for the work of counseling psychologists are discussed in terms of working towards empowering persons in homeless trajectories towards resilience in mental health, taking a stance of social justice.

The current understanding of emotional intelligence (EI) is flawed and incomplete. In the present chapter we briefly highlight some of the major controversies surrounding EI, including the lack of agreement on how to define it and measurement inconsistencies. We propose that the key gap in current EI scholarship concerns the lack of awareness of cultural impacts on affective processes that underlie various components of EI abilities. Drawing from prior theoretical models, we overview three components that have been described as encompassing the construct of ability EI: emotion perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation. For each of these components, we review the relevant cultural literature and discuss how cultural differences can play a substantial role in our understanding of EI as an overall construct. We conclude by discussing how culture should be incorporated into the application and assessment of EI abilities. Ultimately, we propose that one cannot truly understand and talk about EI without considering the context of culture.

This paper focuses on the conceptual model of an academic course inspired by complexity theory. In the proposed conceptual model, the aim of teaching is to form a learning organization: a knowledge community with emergent properties that cannot be reduced to any linear combination of the properties of its parts. In this approach, the learning of the participants depends not so much on their individual action, as on being the coevolving parts of a self-organized whole. In this design, the role of the educator is to catalyze emergence and to facilitate bottom-up knowledge production. To achieve this, we present a systematic way to orchestrate in-class face-to-face activities in small groups while utilizing common web technologies to facilitate online collective action.

The health and healthcare of vulnerable populations is an international concern. In 2011, a Midwestern state within the U.S. mandatorily transitioned 38,000 Medicaid recipients from a fee-for-service system into a managed care program in which managed care companies were contracted to provide recipients’ healthcare for a capitated rate. In addition to cost savings through reductions in preventable and unnecessary hospital admissions, the goals of the managed care program (MCP) included: (1) access to a more functional support system, which can support high and medium risk users in the development of care plans and coordination of care, and (2) choice among competent providers. The population transitioned was a high-need, high-cost, low-income, and low-power group of individuals. The evaluation research team used focus groups as one of many strategies to understand the experience of users during the first two years of this complex change effort. The article explores empowerment in terms of users and their family caregivers’ ability to make meaningful choices and access resources with regard to their healthcare. Specifically, factors empowering and disempowering users were identified within three thematic areas: (1) enrollment experiences, (2) access to care and (3) communication with managed care organizations and providers. While the change was not optional for users, a disempowering feature, there remained opportunities for other empowering and disempowering processes and outcomes through the transition and new managed care program. The results are from 74 participants: 65 users and 9 family caregivers in 11 focus groups and six interviews across two waves of data collection. MCP users felt disempowered by an initial lack of providers, difficulty with transportation to appointments, and challenges obtaining adequate medication. They felt empowered by having a choice of providers, good quality of transportation services and clear communication from providers and managed care organizations. Recommendations for increasing prospects for the empowerment of healthcare users with disabilities within a managed care environment are presented.