Suchergebnisse

This book is an effort to bring together scholars from several countries report on their research on topics of common interest in psychology. At the same time the book also provided an opportunity to observe to some extent the zeitgeist of our discipline, and the progress made toward establishing a world psychology. The contributions from Eastern Europe represent new developments in that direction as formerly the topical interests followed largely Soviet psychology. The chapters also discuss the interests in international psychology. That seems to be a hopeful development as the chapters reflect both theoretical concerns, but also practical information useful to the well-being and integration of society. We hope the book is useful to students and researchers in psychology. As an example of the current interests in international psychology the book could be a useful supplement in a variety of courses including dispositional themes, social psychology and organizational courses. The chapters are divided into three sections. The first section includes chapters on useful methodological approaches and research on personal dispositions. Since cross-cultural and crossnational psychology is particularly complex it is essential that results are framed by established reliability and validity. In particular the section reports on international research approaches and dispositions starting with a chapter on critical thinking in cross-cultural and cultural psychology. This is followed with data based papers on prejudice, the role of personality in electoral choices, practical advice on how to develop cumulative attitude scales, a social-psychological analysis of goal setting in the effective transmission of health information and related to personal dispositions and motivation. The section concludes with a model for pre-testing self-completion surveys and qualitative interviews aimed at improving psychometric validity. Section 2 covers issues of socialization and well-being. This section contains seven chapters including a theoretical chapter on socialization process as influenced by culture. Other topics include the evolution of human socialization and cognition, ethnic identification and social discrimination in Kazakhstan, the social group identity of immigrants, a model of motivation for adolescent delinquency, speech as a mediator of cognitive competence in children and the interaction of police with society. Further the section includes a very topical paper on reactions to 9/11 based on content analysis of editorials in prominent newspapers. The section concludes with a chapter on the relationship of men and women as influenced by many factors including the feminist struggle and lawful changes. Organizational behavior is discussed in section 3. The section reports papers on organizational management and effectiveness, evaluates communication modalities in virtual firms, the role of the marginalization of social groups and effects on employment. The section and book concludes with a discussion on pay satisfaction and a critical evaluation of professional matching based on job competencies. It is our hope the book may be a stimulating bridge toward further international cooperation and a step toward building an inclusive international psychology.

One of the essential aspects in analyzing the topic of managing people's risk behavior in extreme situations is related to the issue of risk perception. The subject of this study was to reveal whether certain factors, such as cultural context, gender, age, education, religious beliefs, etc., mediate the perceived risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted online from April to June 2020. The two samples included a total of 2617 participants aged between 18 and 70 years, where 1412 of which were drawn from Asia and 1205 were representatives of Europe. Participants were asked to complete an internet-based version of a short questionnaire that described the COVID-19 pandemic situation, as one of the questions referred to the hazard perception of the infection. Results obtained showed that there was a higher level of perceived risk among members of the Asian culture group in comparison with the European study participants. Furthermore, it was revealed that gender is not a significant factor in the perception of risk in either the European or the Asian cultural group (p> 0.05). The results showed that levels of the perceived risk increased with age and that there were significant differences between young and old in threat perception for the European sample (p<0.001). Regarding the Asian sample, it turned out that all age groups perceive the risk of infection almost equally. Several demographic characteristics also emerged as important mediators of risk perception. For example, people with the lowest education, married, religious, and families with children fear the hazard of COVID-19 infection to the greatest extent, compared to people with the highest education, singles, atheists, and families without children, who do not perceive the virus as a high-risk factor.