“Getting even”: Clinical considerations of adaptive and maladaptive vengeance

This article is intended to acquaint the reader with the concept of vengeance. Conceptualized as the intense, compelling wish or intention to get even, right a wrong, or avenge an injury, vengeance is best understood on a continuum from innocuous retaliatory fantasies/actions on one end of the continuum to meeting out of death and destruction on the other end. This article identifies various manifestations of vengeance, discusses theoretical formulations related to affects in general and vengeance, in particular, and presents a series of case vignettes which highlight the adaptive and maladaptive function of this psychological phenomenon.     

The Endowment Effect,Status Quo Bias and Loss Aversion: Rational Alternative Explanation

The endowment effect, status quo bias, and loss aversion are robust and well documented results from experimental psychology. They introduce a wedge between the prices at which one is willing to sell or buy a good. The objective of this paper is to address this wedge. We show that the presence of asymmetric information in a rational-agent framework can also account for the endowment effect, status quo bias and loss aversion without invoking psychology-based explanations proposed in the past.     

Socio-economic variables as alternatives to income in measuring regional economic Welfare—The Israeli case

It is quite surprising that, while data on national economic growth is published almost annually in most countries, cautious data for the measurement of regional economic welfare is rarely available. The purpose of the present study is to present a methodological disussion of the quality of variables utilized for measuring regional economic welfare over a span of time, in a situation where an “ideal” data base is lacking. The conclusions of the methodological discussion serve as an essential base for the second part of the paper, which deals with the problem of the increasing or decreasing regional inequality of economic welfare in Israel.     

Respondent characteristics in citizen evaluation of municipal services

Research on citizen surveys tend to focus on how to conduct a survey and how to best utilize the survey data. How respondent characteristics affect responses to a survey has received only cursory treatment in the literature. The present study investigated the role of demographics and generalized attitude, two types of respondent characteristics, in citizen evaluations of municipal services. Of particular interest was the pattern of respondent-responses interaction across time. The Automatic Interaction Detector (AID) was used to analyze survey data collected annually from 1974 through 1979 by a University-affiliated Urban Studies Center in a mid-size metropolitan area. Results indicated that these respondent characteristics could account for a substantial portion of the variance associated with service evaluation. However, the relationship between respondent characteristics and service evaluations is nonlinear, interactively complex and lacking in consistency across time. This widely varying pattern of respondent-responses interactions across time was explained in terms of the effect of a third exposure-experiential factor. Implications for future research and for using citizen survey data in public policy analysis and program development were discussed.     

The Prophecy that Never Fails: On the Uses and Gratifications of Horoscope Reading*

Several studies have revealed the growing popularity of astrology columns, which has brought astrology to a mass level never in its long history enjoyed before. The widespread exposure of astrology columns in newspapers and magazines is studied in the present research, according to the “uses and gratifications” approach originally developed by mass communication scholars, in an attempt to reveal the need gratified by them. Using different anxiety scales and measures of horoscope usage–exposure, regularity, and acceptance—the possible sets of relations between anxiety level, fatalism, and horoscope use are tested following the log-linear procedure. The results only partially confirm the hypothesis: exposure and regularity of readership are shown to be significantly related to several anxiety dimensions, while acceptance of horoscope predictions is related to locus of control, but not directly to anxiety. Finally, the compatibility of horoscopes to the readers' needs is analyzed by the elements of contents, social setting of exposure, and the medium's attributes. This study supports a claim of the uses and gratifications approach, which sees modern media encroaching upon older means of satisfaction of social and psychological needs. Fulfilling this function, horoscopes are the prophecies that never fail.     

Direct Management of COVID-19 at National and Subnational Level: The Case of the Western Amazon Countries

Public Organization Review - This paper analyses direct management of COVID-19 in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, the three largest countries in the Western Amazon region. Using information gathered...     

Linking Ethnic Identification to Organisational Solidarity

Public Organization Review - This paper investigates the process through which ethnic identification (EI) influences employees’ sense of organisational solidarity (OS). A survey of 1525...     

Understanding stress as an impediment to academic performance

Abstract

Objectives: Stress is the most commonly reported impediment to academic performance among college students. The objectives of this study were to examine the accuracy of these perceptions, identify demographic and psychosocial factors that distinguished among students who differed in perceptions of how stress affected their performance, and assess the relations between these factors and grade point average (GPA). Participants: Undergraduate students (N?=?8,997) from 20 Midwestern schools. Methods: Participants completed online surveys during February–March 2015 that assessed perceived impediments to academic performance, cumulative GPA, demographic information, and psychosocial factors. Results: Students who reported that stress affected their performance had lower GPAs, and reported more stress and lower coping self-efficacy, resilience, and social support. Male, heterosexual, and ethnic-minority students were less likely to report having stress (but did not have higher GPAs). Conclusion: Stress reduction interventions should target psychosocial factors related to perceiving stress as an impediment and to poorer performance.