The Emotional Climate of Nations and Their Culture of Peace

Societies seem to have emotional climates that affect how people feel and act in public situations. Unlike the emotions experienced in an individual's personal life, these modal feelings reflect a collective response to the socio-economic-political situation of the society and influence how most people behave toward one another and their government. A government may foster a climate of fear to ensure social control, or it may encourage the formation of heterogeneous social groups to facilitate a climate of trust between people from different groups. On one hand, emotional climates may be viewed as reflecting the relative peacefulness or violence of a society. Thus, an assessment of emotional climate may provide a subjective index of human security to complement objective measures of democracy, human rights, equality, and other factors that we presume are beneficial to human welfare. On the other hand, we may view emotional climates as influences that act to further or to impede the development of the culture of peace advocated by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Thus, their assessment may have predictive power, and measuring a society's emotional climate may help us to create desirable policy. In this article we show that it is possible to measure some important aspects of the emotional climates of three nations that have different degrees of a culture of peace: Norway, the United States, and India. We show that estimates of the collective emotions that constitute climate can be distinguished from reports of personal emotions in that the former are more influenced by nation and the latter by social class. It is the subjective experience of national emotional climate, rather than personal emotional experience, that appears most related to objective indices for the culture of peace in the different nations.     

Human Security in Communities in Costa Rica and the United States

This study has three aims: to create and validate a measure for the experience of human security, to begin exploring how the experience of security relates to the socioeconomic status of the community in which one resides and the emotional climate and culture of peace of one's nation, and to examine what personal factors influence the experience of security within different communities. To assess the security experienced by individuals, we developed a self-report questionnaire based on seven objective aspects of human security outlined by the United Nations: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. We compared middle and lower class communities in the United States and Costa Rica and examined the extent to which individuals depend upon themselves and others in these different communities. Our results show that it is possible to measure the experience of human security, that this experience depends more on national emotional climate than socioeconomic status, and that for community samples, a large part of human security depends on support from family and friends.     

Emotional Climate in Organizations: Applications in Latin American Prisons

Two studies in Latin American prisons analyzed the relation between emotional climate and subclimates, organizational culture, stress, coping, and social support. In the first study, emotional climate was measured in prisons in three different countries by asking employees and prisoners how they perceived the climate in their own group and how they perceived the climate in the outgroup. Employees perceived more positive and less negative emotions in their own group than the prisoners perceived in theirs. The employees correctly perceived high levels of loneliness and sadness in the prisoner group but perceived more guilt and anger and less hope than inmates reported. Within their own group, detainees perceived less joy and confidence in the institution and much more sadness and loneliness than did employees. Participation in institutional activities was associated with a more positive emotional climate. In a second study, using data compiled from five different prisons, it was again found that prisoners perceived high amounts of sadness and loneliness. A negative balance of climate among detainees was associated with a violent and avoidance subculture and with a negative climate among employees. A more positive balance of climate was associated negatively with PTSD and avoidance coping and positively with internal locus of control and subjective social support. The results suggest the importance of distinguishing between positive and negative emotional climate.     

Short-term and long-term processes linking job stressors to father–child interaction

This study explores short-term and long-term processes through which daily job stressors may affect a father's relationship with his school-aged child. Fifteen male air traffic controllers (ATCs) described job stressors and parent–child interaction on three consecutive days. Objective measures of daily workload were also obtained. After a demanding day at work, fathers tended to be more behaviorally and emotionally withdrawn during interactions with their children at home. The emotional withdrawal finding was confirmed with both subjective and objective measures of high workload. There was also evidence of a direct spillover of negative feelings associated with distressing social experiences at work to expressions of anger and greater use of discipline during interactions with a child later in the day. The long-term impact of a chronically stressful work environment was also examined in a separate set of between-subjects analyses. A generally negative social climate at work was associated with a father's tendency to describe his interactions with a child as having a less positive and a more negative emotional tone. Coworkers' independent ratings of the social climate at work confirmed the finding of a long-term negative spillover effect.     

Political Violence, Impunity, and Emotional Climate in Maya Communities

This article explores the effects of political violence and impunity on the emotional climate of Guatemalan Maya communities and the processes that may be drawn upon to improve such climates as revealed by three studies conducted in the 1990s. The first investigated Guatemalan peasants' emotional responses to political and military repression during an ongoing conflict; the second, the effects of participation in judicial processes among a Guatemalan community recovering from a massacre as peace was being negotiated; and the third, the emotional impact of responding to extreme human rights violations among rural Maya women who also critically examined their gendered location in war and peacemaking. Taken collectively, the findings of these studies suggest several resources that have been deployed by survivors of human rights violations in Guatemala as tools for improving emotional climate and for moving forward in ongoing struggles for truth and justice, even in contexts of persistent violence and impunity.     

Differentiating classroom climate concepts: Academic,management, and emotional environments

Abstract

Extensive research has validated the relationship between classroom climate and students’ social, motivational, and cognitive development. Despite improved methods of measurement, the construct itself is still nebulous and hard to delineate. One reason is that there are different dimensions to classroom climate. We examine the literature and suggest that there are three differentiable components: (1) academic, referring to pedagogical and curricular elements of the learning environment; (2) management, referring to discipline styles for maintaining order; and (3) emotional, the affective interactions within the classroom. While these components overlap, emotional climate is the least recognised or studied, and yet equally consequential. Based on our theoretical and empirical work we outline some of the characteristics of the emotional environment. We argue for the importance of treating emotional climate as a distinct aspect of classroom climate. As a concept, the emotional climate of the classroom is superordinate to other classroom climate domains, since it interfaces with the conventional academic and management elements of effective learning environments.     

The Impact of the Madrid Bombing on Personal Emotions, Emotional Atmosphere and Emotional Climate

This article analyzes the personal emotions, emotional atmosphere, and emotional climate in Spain both one week and two months after the terrorist attacks that took place in Madrid on March 11, 2004. It also examines the relationship among these variables and their effect on various behaviors. Participants consisted of 1,807 people from seven autonomous regions in Spain with a mean age of 27.64 years. Personal emotions were significantly affected by degree of Spanish identification. These personal emotions and the general emotional atmosphere were characterized by high levels of sadness, disgust, anger, and contempt, as well as (to a lesser degree) fear. Personal emotions, emotional atmosphere, and the nation's emotional climate improved after two months, although a high degree of sadness persisted in the atmosphere. The emotional climate was relatively independent and stable. Personal emotions had a low but significant capacity for predicting avoidant and altruistic behaviors. Measures of emotional climate added to this ability to predict specific avoidant and altruistic behavior.     

Subjective Well-Being and Peace

Hierarchical generalized linear modeling was employed to examine the relations between person-level subjective well-being (SWB) and peace-relevant attitudes, and how these relations vary across nations in the World Values Survey. Person-level SWB was associated with more confidence in the government and armed forces, greater emphasis on postmaterialist values, stronger support for democracy, less intolerance of immigrants and racial groups, and greater willingness to fight for one's country. These associations were moderated at the nation level by liberal development, violent inequality, gross domestic product, and nation-level SWB. The moderator effects indicate that happy people are not completely blind to the conditions of their society and that their endorsement of peace attitudes is sensitive to whether the conditions for peace do exist.     

Does It Matter if Preschool Children and Mothers Discuss Positive vs. Negative Events During Reminiscing? Links with Mother‐reported Attachment,Family Emotional Climate,and Socioemotional Development

The purpose of the study was to examine the differential relations between mother–child reminiscing about a positive emotional event vs. a negative emotional event and attachment security, family climate, and young children's socioemotional development. Fifty preschool children (M age = 50.69 months, SD = 4.64) and their mothers completed two reminiscing conversations at the laboratory, which were coded for emotion‐laden discourse, affect, and elaboration, and children completed measures of emotional understanding and representations of relationships. At their homes, mothers completed the attachment Q‐sort and the self‐report family inventory. Both attachment security and family climate were related to the quality of mother–child affect and maternal elaboration during both positive and negative reminiscing conversations. Attachment security and family climate, however, were principally related to discussion of emotion during the negative event discussions. In addition, it was mother–child reminiscing about the negative emotional event that was associated with high levels of children's socioemotional development.     

方法论视阈下稳定是硬任务解析——兼论社会管理中的法德兼治

稳定是一个国家兴旺发达的先决条件,社会稳定是当代世界和平发展、共兴同荣的重大课题,如何实现社会的和谐稳定是各国政府必须面对和解决的重大理论和实践问题。本文从方法论视角,对我国的社会稳定问题进行了理性思考,诠释了"稳定是硬任务"的科学论断,提出构建法德兼治的二元体制,保证法治与德治的顺利融合与和合施行并实现良性互动,形成完整的社会规范系统和调控手段系统,是实现社会稳定的根本途径。     

全球化语境下的民族价值观之构建

在全球化条件下,价值冲突出现了新的特点:它更多地以民族主义、民族传统冲突的形式出现;不同民族价值观的复杂性和多层次性得到了相当程度的展现;各种价值观更具有了实践性力量的特征;文化经济化和经济文化化倾向为国外的价值观念扩展自己的影响提供了适宜的土壤。民族价值观的构建必须同探索新的社会发展模式结合起来;必须以人类理性精神的重建为基础;必须正确处理本民族文化与异质文化的关系问题。因为全球化语境下的民族价值是动态开放的、具有内在张力的;是具有民族特色的、同时又符合普世价值的;是综合的、多元一体的、以协调为主的;是具有现时代特征的、以人为本的。     

Eyetracking measures of social attention in young children: How gaze patterns translate to real‐life social behaviors

The aim of this study was to evaluate to what degree eyetracking paradigms of social attention, in combination with synchronous measurements of affective arousal, were associated with real‐life social behavior of children aged 3–7 years. Several eyetracking paradigms were used, involving social interactions, single/multiple faces, and emotional faces. Arousal was measured using electrocardiography. Real‐life social behavior was measured using structured behavior observations, parent questionnaires, and developmental interviews. Time spent looking at social stimuli was significantly associated with real‐life social behaviors, and independent of age, IQ, or gender. Paradigms involving social interactions and looking time to the eyes showed the most consistent relations with social behaviors. Stronger affective arousal responses were associated with shorter looking times toward eyes, which in turn were associated with less social awareness in real life. Eyetracking and arousal measures allow for sensitive and objective assessment of social abilities that have great relevance for real‐life social behaviors, with the potential to use in a broad and diverse population. These measures may help gain insight into the underpinnings of social behavior and may serve as a valuable marker or outcome measure in understanding, monitoring, and stimulating social‐emotional development early in life.     

Who governs or how they govern: Testing the impact of democracy,ideology and globalization on the well being of the poor

This paper examines the effects of regime type, government ideology and economic globalization on poverty in low- and middle-income countries around the world. We use panel regression to estimate the effect of these explanatory variables on two different response variables: national poverty gap (104 countries from 1981 to 2005) and child mortality rate (132 countries from 1976 to 2005). We find consistent and significant results for the interactive effect of democracy and government ideology: strong leftist power under a democratic regime is associated with a reduction in both the poverty gap and the child mortality rate. Democracy, on its own, is associated with a lower child mortality rate, but has no effect on the poverty gap. Leftist power under a non-democratic regime is associated with an increase in both poverty measures. Trade reduces both measures of poverty. Foreign direct investment has a weak and positive effect on the poverty gap. From examining factors that influence the welfare of poor people in less developed countries, we conclude that who governs is as important as how they govern.     

学校音乐教育与民族音乐的传承

民族音乐是我国民族文化宝库中的瑰宝。新世纪的中国民族音乐教育 ,应与以多元文化为基础的世界音乐教育发展趋势相协调 ,通过在我国学校音乐教育中树立以民族音乐为本的观念 ,在教育思想、教育的生态环境、教学内容、教学方法等方面进行一系列改革 ,建立完整的民族音乐教育体系     

Children's Anger, Emotional Expressiveness, and Empathy: Relations with Parents' Empathy, Emotional Expressiveness, and Parenting Practices

In Roberts and Strayer (1996 ) we described how emotional factors were strongly related to children's empathy, which in turn strongly predicted prosocial behavior. This paper focuses on how these child emotional factors, assessed across methods and sources, related to parental factors (empathy, emotional expressiveness, encouragement of children's emotional expressiveness, warmth and control) for a subset of 50 two‐parent families from our earlier sample. Parents reported on their emotional characteristics and parenting; children (5 to 13 years old; 42% girls) also described parenting practices. Children's age and parenting factors accounted for an average of 32% of the variance in child emotional factors, which, with role‐taking, strongly predicted children's empathy. In contrast to earlier, less comprehensive studies, we found important paths between parents’ and children's empathy, mediated by children's anger. These countervailing pathways largely neutralized each other, resulting in the low correlations usually seen when parents’ and children's empathy are examined in isolation. Thus our findings are an important confirmation and extension of the theoretically expected link between parents’ and children's empathy.     

Emotional Climate in Families Experiencing Homelessness: Associations with Child Affect and Socioemotional Adjustment in School

This study examined associations among family‐level risks, emotional climate, and child adjustment in families experiencing homelessness. Emotional climate, an indirect aspect of emotion socialization, was indexed by parents’ expressed emotion while describing their children. Sociodemographic risk and parent internalizing distress were hypothesized to predict more negativity and less warmth in the emotional climate. Emotional climate was expected to predict observer‐rated child affect and teacher‐reported socioemotional adjustment, mediating effects of risk. Participants were 138 homeless parents (64 percent African‐American) and their four‐ to six‐year‐old children (43.5 percent male). During semi‐structured interviews, parents reported demographic risks and internalizing distress and completed a Five Minute Speech Sample about their child, later rated for warmth and negativity. Children's positive and negative affect were coded from videotapes of structured parent‐child interaction tasks. Socioemotional adjustment (externalizing behavior, peer acceptance, and prosocial behavior) was reported by teachers a few months later. Hypotheses were partially supported. Parent internalizing distress was associated with higher parent negativity, which was linked to more negative affect in children, and parent warmth was associated with children's positive affect. Neither emotional climate nor child affect predicted teacher‐reported externalizing behavior or peer acceptance, but parental negativity and male sex predicted lower prosocial behavior in the classroom. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.     

Collective Emotions in Conflict Situations: Societal Implications

It is well established today that emotions are an important part of most societal dynamics. The current article focuses on the role of different collective emotional elements in creating, preserving, and resolving conflicts. The main premise is that collective emotions play a pivotal role in shaping individual and societal responses to conflicting events and in contributing to the evolvement of a social context that maintains the emotional climate and collective emotional orientation that have developed. The first part of the article provides a conceptual framework to discuss the relations between conflict, context, and collective emotions. The second part uses the conceptual framework to discuss the societal implications of the articles presented in this issue. Taken together, the parts create a platform for future research on the role of collective emotions in conflict resolution and the construction of cultures of peace.     

民族节日与道德记忆

节日是民族文化的个性化和集中化表达,展现不同民族的文化风貌是民族节日活动的精神性特征。民族节日t的文化展演强化了共同体成员对民族价值观的道德记忆,民族的道德记忆不仅有利于共同体伦理关系的延续和扩展,激发共同体内部的团结与和谐等道德力量,而且是民族身份认同的伦理基础。道德记忆是民族的道德知识,在将道德知识转化为道德实践的过程中,道德濡化是一个必不可少的重要环节。     

The Precautionary Principle in Context: U.S. and E.U. Scientists' Prescriptions for Policy in the Face of Uncertainty*

Objective. Our objective is to explain how scientists interpret less‐than‐certain scientific findings to inform policymakers' choices on controversial science policy issues. We focus on two particularly difficult policy cases concerning global climate change and low‐dose radiation protection. Methods. Our method is to analyze data from a unique multination survey of scientists to analyze the ways their views about what is scientifically correct are translated into judgments about appropriate policy. The surveys asked scientists, randomly drawn from U.S. and E.U. subscribers to the journal Science, to indicate the “most likely” relationships between greenhouse gas emissions and average global temperatures and between radiation dose and incidence of cancer in humans. Follow‐up questions asked for their judgments about appropriate policy targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emission and safety standards for radiation exposure. The data permit analysis of the relationships between scientific certainty and policy judgments in these two cases. Results. Our results shed light on when and how scientists reach precautionary policy conclusions, demonstrating that scientists' application of precaution is dependent on context. In the case of radiation protection, greater certainty is associated with less precaution. But with respect climate change, we found the opposite relationship. Conclusions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for the role of scientists, and scientific advice, in the policy process.     

Policy Climates and Reductions in Automobile Use*

Objectives. This study examines how national environmental policy influences individual car‐driving behavior in the European Union. Methods. Using the International Social Survey: Environment II in conjunction with the 2001 and 2002 Environmental Sustainability Indices, we analyze the relationship between macro‐level policy indicators and the reported reduction of individual car driving for environmental reasons, controlling for meso‐ and micro‐level factors. Results. Our results show that individuals report a greater likelihood of driving less for environmental reasons when they live in nations that adopt strong pro‐environmental policies, even when such policies are not directly related to car use. Conclusions. Our finding that a national policy climate focused on environmental sustainability is associated with pro‐environmental behaviors among individuals in that nation encourages us to believe that greater international cooperation on environmental issues (such as the Kyoto Protocol) and increased strength of domestic environmental policies will positively change individual behavior.