Suchergebnisse

With a background in sociolinguistics, this paper presents the theoretical, methodological and epistemological issues the author was forced to negotiate in conducting the apparently simple task of investigating a few dozen people's attitudes towards the English influence on their own language. The paper discusses the fundamental epistemological shortcomings of different approaches to attitude research. Three different orders of analysis are attempted and reflected upon, a standardized quantitative analysis, a discourse analysis and a deconstructive, nonessentialist analysis. It is the author's firm believe that this critical examination of methods is on the one hand essential for academic approaches to attitude research, and on the other essential in informing the public - you and me - about the mechanisms of opinion polls which underlies so much modern political work. In this respect, the papers "failure" to set up a new and improved approach to attitude research, and its content to point out the shortcomings of the current approaches, may not be a failure as much as a conscious plea to do away with the notion of a objective or neutral investigation of opinions.

With a background in sociolinguistics, this paper presents the theoretical, methodological and epistemological issues the author was forced to negotiate in conducting the apparently simple task of investigating a few dozen people's attitudes towards the English influence on their own language. The paper discusses the fundamental epistemological shortcomings of different approaches to attitude research. Three different orders of analysis are attempted and reflected upon, a standardized quantitative analysis, a discourse analysis and a deconstructive, nonessentialist analysis. It is the author's firm believe that this critical examination of methods is on the one hand essential for academic approaches to attitude research, and on the other essential in informing the public - you and me - about the mechanisms of opinion polls which underlies so much modern political work. In this respect, the papers "failure" to set up a new and improved approach to attitude research, and its content to point out the shortcomings of the current approaches, may not be a failure as much as a conscious plea to do away with the notion of a objective or neutral investigation of opinions.

Coram populo.--On the brink of politics.--Rusticity and contemplation.--The humdrum of revolt.--The usual thing.--Impatient "culture" and the literal mind.--Literary class distinctions.--The art of disparagement.--International impressionism.--Quotation and allusion.--Occasional verse. ; Mode of access: Internet.

This paper argues that rank disequilibrium (or status inconsistency) is a factor in developing right-wing attitudes. The topic had contemporary relevance with the prominence of the John Birch Society, the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the Anti-U.N. movement, and the 1964 Republican convention held in South San Francisco.

We study the long-run effects of con ict on social attitudes, with World War II in Central and Eastern Europe as our setting. Much of earlier work has relied on self- reported measures of victimization, which are prone to endogenous misreporting. With our own survey-based measure, we replicate established findings linking victimization to political participation, civic engagement, optimism, and trust. Those findings are reversed, however, when tested instead with an objective measure of victimization based on historical reference material. Thus, we urge caution when interpreting survey- based results from this literature as causal.

Welfare state attitudes are often studied from the perspective of the individual's characteristics and/or national or regime-type contexts. This thesis instead seeks explanations for individuals' varying attitudes towards the welfare state at the level of local contexts (municipalities). Sweden is used as a case for testing whether there are such contextual effects. The general aim is to find out whether social, political, and institutional aspects of local context influence the attitudes of individuals. Since the general aim of this thesis is to examine how background characteristics of individuals and characteristics of local contexts simultaneously act in shaping individuals' attitudes, I use multilevel modelling in order to handle individual-level and contextual-level data simultaneously. Latent-class analysis (LCA) is also employed in the analyses to explore the patterning of variables. This is mainly done in order to create dependent variables and to distinguish between categories of municipalities sharing similar characteristics. The data consist of Swedish survey data, which have been complemented by municipal-level data. The findings indicate that the social and political context of municipalities can matter for individuals' attitude formation. Variation across municipalities in terms of the prevalence of social problems and risks seems to influence how individuals view the welfare state. Local municipal contexts characterized by many social problems and risks tend to be associated with more welfare state friendly attitudes among the local inhabitants, after taking individual-level determinants into account. Support for high social spending is greater in such milieus as is the tendency to view welfare beneficiaries with less suspicion regarding the potential abuse of welfare policies. Regarding the influence of local public service provision on attitudes, no evidence was found for feedback effects on individuals' attitudes toward public service privatization. In their attitudes towards the welfare state, individuals are to some extent influenced by their local environment. There seems to be a 'built in' thermostat in the Swedish welfare state. Local circumstances characterized by social problems and risks tend to be associated with a local citizenry having more welfare state-friendly attitudes.

"January 1983"--P. [4] of cover. ; "Government-wide report"--Cover. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In general, attitudes towards nations have a fair amount of reciprocity: nations either like each other are relatively indifferent to each other or dislike each other Sometimes, however international attitudes are asymmetrical. In this study, we use social identity theory in order to explain asymmetrical attitudes. Parting from social identity theory, asymmetrical attitudes can be predicted to occur most likely between countries that are linguistically either similar or closely related, but differ in size. Europe, more than any other continent, offers a rich variety of nations which represent natural conditions for our study, such as size and degree of linguistic similarity. In order to test hypotheses derived from social identity theory, we asked respondents (N = 405) from (Dutch- and French-speaking) Belgium, France, Germany, and The Netherlands to fill out a questionnaire on three large nations (Germany, Great Britain, France) and three smaller ones (The Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark). Results strongly supported hypotheses and confirm that a social identity approach may help to better understand international attitudes. ; Peer reviewed

The reactions and values that individuals possess towards objects or situations reflect their attitudes. A metaphor is to describe a situation or object by establishing an analogy to another situation or object. The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes and perceptions of undergraduate students studying at various faculties towards sports. The present study, in which a mixed method design was used, was conducted with undergraduate students of Gazi University in the 2017-2018 academic year. In this context, the sample of the study was comprised of a total of 481 (241 female, 240 male) undergraduate students studying at various departments, such as Physical Education Teaching, Banking and Insurance, Political Science and Public Administration, Law, Statistics, Finance, Chemical Engineering, Banking, Conservatory, and Psychological Counseling and Guidance (PCG). Data collection tools were "Demographic Information Form" developed by the researchers, "The Sports-Oriented Attitude Scale" developed by Koçak (2014), and "semi-structured form" prepared by researchers to collect qualitative data. In the analysis of the data, frequency, arithmetic mean, and standard deviation values were calculated and t-test and ANOVA were applied to the quantitative data. Besides, content analysis was applied to the qualitative data. Significant positive correlations were found between the subdimensions of the attitudes of university students towards sports and age. It was found that the subdimensions of the attitudes toward sports showed significant differences in favor of female participants, and the subdimensions of psychosocial development and mental development were found to be significantly different in favor of the students' of departments of teaching. There were significant positive correlations between the subdimensions of the attitudes of university students towards sports and age. In the context of the qualitative data of the study, it was discovered that metaphors obtained from the participants were found to be ...

As science continues to progress, attitudes towards science seem to become ever more polarized. Whereas some put their faith in science, others routinely reject and dismiss scientific evidence. The current chapter provides an integration of recent research on how people evaluate science. We organize our chapter along three research topics that are most relevant to this goal: ideology, motivation, and morality. We review the relations of political and religious ideologies to science attitudes, discuss the psychological functions and motivational underpinnings of belief in science, and describe work looking at the role of morality when evaluating science and scientists. In the final part of the chapter, we apply what we know about science evaluations to the current crisis of faith in science and the open science movement. Here, we also take into account the increased accessibility and popularization of science and the (perceived) relations between science and industry.

This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes.

We studied a male with acquired prosopagnosia using a battery of implicit association tests (IATs) to investigate whether observing faces varying by social category would activate the patient's implicit social biases. We also asked him to categorize faces explicitly by race, gender, and political party. The patient, G.B., was marginally slower to categorize black compared to white faces. He showed congruency effects in the race and celebrity IATs, but not in the gender or political IATs. These results indicate that G.B. possesses an implicit social sensitivity to certain facial stimuli despite an inability to overtly recognize familiar faces. The results demonstrate that social biases can be retrieved based on facial stimuli via pathways bypassing the fusiform gyri. Thus the IAT effect can be added to the list of covert recognition effects found in prosopagnosia.

The research problem was defined as 'What is the attitude towards studying in Poland, and how has it changed in connection with transformational and generational changes?'Methods of data collection and analysis: An original questionnaire, "Attitudes to Studying", containing 55 statements referring to nine content areas defining attitudes towards studying.Indication of the research sample: The research was conducted between 2015 and 2017 (N=2102). Three generations were defined, as follows: younger generation, 17–39; middle generation, 40–59; and older generation, 60 plus. Other variables taken into consideration were study status, political transformation (study before and after 1989), and gender.Main results: The research allowed us to distinguish three empirical factors relating to motivation to study. The first of these is linked to the decrease in motivation connected with the egalitarianism of studying. This factor was more important for women than for men. The second indicates the significance of a university's prestige when taking up studies . Motivation understood in this way was more important for women, people studying before the political transformation, and the results on this scale generally increased with the age of the respondents. The third indicates the role of social pressure in making decisions about studying – this is more important for people studying before the political transformation, and for men compared to women. Interestingly, social pressure is more important for those still studying than for those who have already graduated.Conclusions: The research made it possible to distinguish three main groups of motives relating to studying in Poland: the environment and prestige of the university as factors increasing motivation, and the egalitarianism of studies as a factor decreasing motivation. Attitudes towards studying are influenced by both the motives present before the political transformation, as well as those which appeared as the result of socio-cultural changes.

The research problem was defined as 'What is the attitude towards studying in Poland, and how has it changed in connection with transformational and generational changes?'Methods of data collection and analysis: An original questionnaire, "Attitudes to Studying", containing 55 statements referring to nine content areas defining attitudes towards studying.Indication of the research sample: The research was conducted between 2015 and 2017 (N=2102). Three generations were defined, as follows: younger generation, 17–39; middle generation, 40–59; and older generation, 60 plus. Other variables taken into consideration were study status, political transformation (study before and after 1989), and gender.Main results: The research allowed us to distinguish three empirical factors relating to motivation to study. The first of these is linked to the decrease in motivation connected with the egalitarianism of studying. This factor was more important for women than for men. The second indicates the significance of a university's prestige when taking up studies . Motivation understood in this way was more important for women, people studying before the political transformation, and the results on this scale generally increased with the age of the respondents. The third indicates the role of social pressure in making decisions about studying – this is more important for people studying before the political transformation, and for men compared to women. Interestingly, social pressure is more important for those still studying than for those who have already graduated.Conclusions: The research made it possible to distinguish three main groups of motives relating to studying in Poland: the environment and prestige of the university as factors increasing motivation, and the egalitarianism of studies as a factor decreasing motivation. Attitudes towards studying are influenced by both the motives present before the political transformation, as well as those which appeared as the result of socio-cultural changes.

International audience ; Globalisation has emerged as an important phenomenon affecting the environment in which businesses operate. While trade and economic issues have dominated public perception of globalisation, we argue that it needs to be construed as a multi-dimensional construct. Based on a social representations perspective, this study surveys executives to discern their attitudes towards globalisation. Results suggest that executives perceive globalisation in complex ways and are influenced by cultural, political and environmental issues, in addition to the business and economic ones. Nationality, age and work experience significantly affect their perception. The varying perceptions of the executives can affect how organisations deal with the opportunities and threats in the global environment, so organisations would benefit from building an internal consensus on their global vision.