"Aiming to inform and empower, this book approaches trauma from a social and political psychological perspective. It is written for those directly affected by trauma and those supporting them, as well as researchers and practitioners in social, political, and clinical psychology. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core"--
Many of us have been affected by trauma and struggle to manage our health and well-being. The social psychological approach to health highlights how social and cultural forces, as much as individual ones, are central to how we experience and cope with adversity. This book integrates psychology, politics, and medicine to offer a new understanding that speaks to the causes and consequences of traumatic experiences. Connecting the personal with the political, Muldoon details the evidence that traumatic experiences can, under certain conditions, impact people's political positions and appetite for social change. This perspective reveals trauma as a socially situated phenomenon linked to power and privilege or disempowerment and disadvantage. The discussion will interest those affected by trauma and those supporting them, as well as students, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in social psychology, health and clinical psychology, and political science. This title is available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Using data drawn from the adult population in Northern Ireland (N=1,515), this article examines the relationship between perceived intergroup threat and psychological well-being, taking into consideration the mediating role of social identification and the moderating role of political conflict exposure. Results by and large confirmed our predictions that perceived threat would be directly associated with poorer well-being but would also exert a positive indirect effect on well-being via increased social identification. However, these relationships were dependent on individuals' prior conflict exposure, such that the positive indirect relationship between perceived threat and psychological well-being emerged only for two subpopulations: individuals who had high direct and high indirect exposure to conflict, and individuals who had low direct, but high indirect conflict exposure. No indirect effects emerged for individuals with relatively lower conflict exposure. Results are discussed with regard to their implications for research on the consequences of intergroup threat in political conflict settings and beyond. Adapted from the source document.
In: Peace and conflict: journal of peace psychology ; the journal of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, Peace Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, Band 6, Heft 2, S. 157-176
In: Peace and conflict: journal of peace psychology ; the journal of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, Peace Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, Band 6, Heft 2, S. 157-176
Examines school-age (8-11 years) children's (N = 689) self-reported experience of a number of negative life events, including a number of conflict-related events in relation to gender, age, socioeconomic status, & religious affiliation in the politically violent context of Northern Ireland. Reports suggest that children's experience of conflict-related events is considerable: 25% had witnessed shootings & street riots. Observed main & interaction effects related children's reported experiences to gender, religious affiliation, & socioeconomic background. The relationship between exposure to political conflict & children's perceived competence was also examined, while accounting for psychosocial factors that independently affect perceived competence. Analysis suggested that children reporting lower behavioral competence are more likely to report experience of conflict-related events, whereas lower global self-worth was related to experience of conflict-related negative events. Discussion of these results emphasizes the importance of accounting for children's conflict-related experiences within the context of their current psychosocial environment to fully understand the influence of political conflict on child adjustment. 5 Tables, 1 Figure, 45 References. Adapted from the source document.
Abstract. This article explores how the populist radical right manage identity talk on an international stage. Speeches from the Europe of Nations and Freedom conference held in Koblenz, Germany, on January 21, 2017, were analyzed using a rhetorical and critical discursive psychology approach. This occasion was a celebratory public display of international solidarity between political actors who privilege national interests, advocate stronger immigration control and are Eurosceptic. Results highlight two interdependent rhetorical strategies that construct an inclusive diverse transnational political community, built on the core shared ideology of exclusionary nationalist nativism. Firstly, "Constructing the Transnational Patriot" works up a superordinate political category often labeled the "patriots" that transcends individual nation-states. Temporal and spatial boundary work was done to construct the political collective as extensive, expanding and enduring. This capacity for the speakers to position themselves as prototypical members of a transnational political community facilitates and demands the second rhetorical strategy, "Ambivalent Diversity." Here speakers acknowledge and celebrate the cultural diversity of their political collective through a precious "national diversity" between nation-states while simultaneously displaying hostility to cultural diversity within nation-states. Speakers present themselves, and their political collective, as courageous protectors of the segregated national diversity against the threatening collusion between the violent oppressive political "elite" and exploitative immigrants. The speakers hijack the liberal understanding of diversity and reconfigure it in support of an argument defending the victimized majority and national cultural homogeneity.
The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) holds that viewing former outgroup members as part of a larger shared ingroup can allow social categorisation to be harnessed for social cohesion. The ingroup projection model (IPM) suggests that even where shared identification occurs, social divisions can be transposed into superordinate groups. Here we explore the potentially inclusive national identity in a region (Northern Ireland) which has historically seen a high polarisation of identities. Using three data sets ( N = 2000; N = 359; N = 1179), we examine the extent to which a superordinate inclusive national identity, Northern Irish, is related to conciliatory attitudes. We find a common ingroup identity is linked to more positive social attitudes but not to more positive political attitudes. We conclude by considering the complexities of applying psychological models in the real world where structural and historical social divisions and vexing oppositional political questions can be transposed into new social and political orders.
In: Stevenson , C , McNamara , N & Muldoon , O 2014 , ' Stigmatised Identity and Service Usage in Disadvantaged Communities: Residents', community workers' and service providers' perspectives. ' , Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology , vol. 24 , no. 6 , pp. 453-466 . https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2184
The impact of community stigmatisation upon service usage has been largely overlooked from a social identity perspective. Specifically, the social identity-mediated mechanisms by which stigmatisation hinders service use remain unspecified. The present study examines how service providers, community workers and residents recount their experience of the stigmatisation of local community identity and how this shapes residents' uptake of welfare, education and community support services. Twenty individual and group interviews with 10 residents, 16 community workers and six statutory service providers in economically disadvantaged communities in Limerick, Ireland, were thematically analysed.Analysis indicates that statutory service providers endorsed negative stereotypes of disadvantaged areas as separate and anti-social. The awareness of this perceived division and the experience of 'stigma consciousness' was reported by residents and community workers to undermine trust, leading to under-utilisation of community and government services. We argue that stigmatisation acts as a 'social curse' by undermining shared identity between service users and providers and so turning a potentially cooperative intragroup relationship into a fraught intergroup one. We suggest that tackling stigma in order to foster a sense of shared identity is important in creating positive and cooperative service interactions for both service users and providers.
As with the identification and labelling of many mental health problems, the adoption of PTSD within DSM can be said to arise from contemporaneous social and political contexts: specifically the return to the United States of many war‐affected veterans from Vietnam (Scott, 1993). The specific circumstances of the recognition of PTSD within DSM‐III have led several commentators to discuss it in terms of social construction (e.g., Summerfield, 2001). The current review argues that the orientation of theory and research aimed at understanding PTSD has been particularly informed by Western individualistic constructions of social phenomena. Our review calls for a blending of approaches to understanding post‐traumatic stress by considering the social structures and contexts in which it is expressed and in particular by considering how a group‐level analysis can inform incidence, diagnosis, and expression of post‐traumatic symptoms.