Volunteering to Assist the Homeless: Public Service and Individual Differences

Abstract

The present investigation examined the effects of three public service announcements (PSAs) on undergraduates’ willingness to volunteer to assist the homeless at a local emergency shelter. A PSA designed to arouse empathy in listeners generally yielded a higher rate of volunteering to assist the homeless than either a self-oriented PSA or an unemotional, other-oriented PSA. The PSA designed to arouse empathy was found to be especially effective in promoting volunteering in individuals who scored relatively high on trait affective empathy and who, in turn, reported a relatively strong empathic response to this message.     

Attributions of Responsibility in a Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) Vignette Among Respondents with CSA Histories: The Role of Abuse Similarity to a Hypothetical Victim

Previous research suggests that similarity to a victim may influence attributions of responsibility in hypothetical child sexual abuse scenarios. One aspect of similarity receiving mixed support in the literature is respondent child sexual abuse history. Using a sample of 1,345 college women, the present study examined child sexual abuse history, similarity to victim, and attributions of responsibility to a hypothetical victim, family member, and perpetrator in a child sexual abuse vignette. Results revealed no group differences in responsibility ratings among respondents with and without child sexual abuse histories. However, among the 133 respondents with child sexual abuse histories, results indicated that similarity to victim moderated the relationship between vignette characteristics, respondent history, and responsibility attributions. Results suggest that similarity to a victim may influence ratings in a self-preserving manner.     

Employment mobility or turnover? An analysis of child welfare and protection employee retention

This article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005 being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.     

Ideology, culture, and ambiguity: The revolutionary process in Iran

Conclusion To varying degrees, polysemous appeals are a feature of nearly all political coalitions and negotiations. But they are especially important in revolutions in which mass protests accompany a sudden collapse and elimination of the old regime state. In such a situation, it is not the case that a few coalition planks are ambiguous in an otherwise institution-alized political structure; instead, even the main outlines of how politics will operate in a new regime is undetermined. Given the chaos and uncertainty, revolutionary unity necessarily focusses upon rejection of the regime itself, and revolutionaries appeal to widely familiar cultural images (as in the appeal to Islam) whose durability within the society has depended on a degree of flexibility in interpretation and application. There is neither time nor reason for the opposition coalition to settle upon a detailed post-revolutionary program.Ambiguous (i.e., polysemous) ideology is an essential component of revolutionary unity and sets the stage for the struggle over the meaning of the revolution, after the fall of the old regime. Different factions struggle over the particular meaning of the images and concepts that had united the revolutionary coalition as a whole. However, this ambiguity makes quite probable an outcome in which revolutions eat their children; the initial revolutionary unity cannot possibly survive, as the construction of a new revolutionary state will necessarily reject some interpretations of the meaning of ambiguous revolutionary ideology.Particularly astute revolutionary leaders - Khomeini or Lenin, for instance - can take advantage of such a situation to create a new revolutionary state in their own image, before many of their potential adversaries fully understand what is happening or how most effectively to resist. In such a case, there often is no obvious, specific program that could truly represent the coalition as a whole, or even a majority of it. The faction that defines the ideology of the revolution by taking control of revolutionary state formation and suppressing alternatives may forever remain a minority. To take one illustration, while both the Bolsheviks and the Islamic Republican Party redefined political discourse, in both cases voting patterns suggested their minority status even after the seizure of power. The Bolsheviks, outpolled by the Socialist Revolutionaries, remained a minority in the voting for the Constituent Assembly after the October Revolution, and thus disbanded the assembly. As the Islamic Republic was institutionalized as a theocracy, voting participation steadily declined. There remains broad opposition to the clerical regime among many initial supporters of the revolution.Nevertheless, while revolutions are situations in which ambiguity is likely to be especially significant, there are different kinds of revolutions; ambiguity will matter more or less depending on exactly how the revolutionary crisis emerges and plays itself out. (Thus the following discussion is partly a response to Skocpol's call for a closer examination of the different revolutionary circumstances that allow ideology to have different kinds of effects.)In some revolutions (though the exception more than the rule) unifying revolutionary ideology will be more specific than the connotative images and concepts that unified the Iranian opposition to the Shah. This is especially likely when there is a revolutionary group poised to implement a program (after the fall of the old regime) because it has a history as an organized, clearly dominant opposition, with an identifiable program and a mass following. This fact may explain why Poland, benefitting from the earlier establishment of Solidarity, at least initially seemed more directed than some of its neighbors in establishing a new political and social order after the collapse of communist states in 1988–1989.Solidarity, then, is an example of the fact that the more time there is for the identity and intentions of a revolutionary group to become known, the less likely that such a group can hide behind an ambiguous program. Protracted civil war is another context that will generally clarify the ideologies of the adversaries, though those adversaries may have initially been united by an ambiguous ideology. And the context of civil war will place great pressure on all organized political groups to choose one side or another.However, sudden revolutionary crises may involve some political floundering for some time, in cases where there is not a long-standing, organized opposition and there do not emerge leaders with a coherent revolutionary vision and the strategic skill to take advantage of the ambiguous ideology and uncertain outcome of revolutionary situations. In the absence of leaders willing or able to negotiate through such unknown terrain, to construct a new state on the basis of a new program - without turning allies into adversaries too quickly - the ultimate meaning of the revolution may be contested for some time. In the case of Madero's anti-reelection revolution in Mexico, for example, mass mobilization and sudden victory over the Diaz regime was followed by the absence of any coherent program, and a subsequent slide into chaos and civil war. A different version of this scenario may be developing in much of Eastern Europe today. Clearly the nations of Eastern Europe experienced sudden state collapse precipitated by mass mobilization. Participants experienced the ectasy and unity of opposition to, and sudden success against, the old regime. But it quickly became unclear what was to be done next. In some cases, there was an apparent commitment to a free-market ideology, but there was little commitment to the details and difficulties that a free-market program would actually entail. While free-market advocates initially appeared dynamic and exciting, their ultimate success may prove superficial. In other cases, as in the former Czechoslovakia, there seemed to be less a post-revolutionary program than an uncertain pattern of continued dismantling of the past, with no obvious replacement offered to guide the future.In such cases, where dominant factions do not commit themselves to a coherent program, Goldstone's explanation of the rise of nationalism may be quite relevant. He argues that nationalism becomes the rallying cry, to a large extent, because revolutionary leaders are unable to deliver on initial promises about economic rejuvenation. Nationalism has of course been one of the primary ideological developments in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Goldstone's schema also helps explain revolutions in which no faction attempts, or is able, to implement a coherent program soon after the fall of the old regime. For example, in cases where the initial crisis weakens but does not eliminate the old regime state, and elites and masses do not both emphasize total elimination of a hated regime, the revolutionary crisis can initiate a protracted process of increasing revolutionary mobilization best explained by Goldstone's approach. Such would be the case in the French Revolution, for example, where none of the main revolutionary players initially advocated what ultimately became the program of the revolution. Still, even in such cases, ambiguous propositions can be a powerful aspect of unifying ideology: Goldstone notes that, in the heady early days of the French Revolution, the will of the people was the one principle that all accepted for the resolution of conflicts.... One could add to Goldstone's observation that this unifying principle was a very ambiguous one.There are additional factors that may be relevant to the role of ambiguity in revolutionary process and ideology, and whose significance is worthy of further inquiry. For example, it seems likely that some significant degree of shared cultural or political identity is necessary for an ambiguous ideology to serve as a point of unity at all. Thus, while ethnic divisions in Iran were certainly significant in the revolution, the main revolutionary proponents thought of themselves fundamentally as Iranians and, usually, as Shiites. However, to unite ideologically all the societies of the former Soviet Union, after the August 1991 failed coup, would have required such extensive ambiguity as to be unworkable. While the images and concepts that unite a diverse revolutionary coalition can be quite general in nature and subject to diverse interpretations, they do have to be shared and strongly felt.The Iranian Revolution demonstrated how significant shared but unspecified revolutionary ideology can be; and Ayatollah Khomeini and the clerical radicals demonstrated what new ideological directions a revolution can take as a result of the perilous and uncertain struggle to define the new regime of meaning that is a crucial aspect of revolutionary states.     

Evaluating Polls with Poll Data

The Roper Organization conducted two surveys in 1985 on thepublic's attitudes toward polls. One was a 10-question interviewand the other was a single question asking for reactions toletters both critical and laudatory of polls. Results of thetwo surveys, which were asked of national samples of adults,indicate that although there is skepticism among the publicabout polls, few people are entirely negative. However, therise in the last 10 years in the percentage of those who arecritical of polls suggests that there is cause for concern.The author makes suggestions for improving polling from therespondent's point of view.