Beliefs About Good and Evil: Literature Review

Beliefs About Good and Evil: Literature Review Sohila Sandher Maggie Campbell, Johanna Ray Vollhardt, (15 Jul, 2013) Fighting the Good Fight: The Relationship Between Belief in Evil and Support for Violent Policies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vol. 41. 250-267 Retrieved from: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/41/2/250.full.pdf+html Maggie Campbell and Johanna Ray Vollhartd attempt to address â€Å"which forms of collective action more effectively communicate the illegitimacy of the status quo and the efficacy of a group? What are the factors that shape support for different protest strategies?† The goal of their studie was to â€Å"explore the extent to which violent and non-violent tactics convey a heightened or mitigated sense of illegitimacy and act to build or undermine a sense of group efficacy in the movement.† They also worked to â€Å"consider relationships between the use of violent and non-violent tacts and endorsement of those tacts in future action.† They also explore the existence of amoderator of prcesses, specifically focusing on allegations of corruption against authority. Their study was based on Coal Seam Mining in Australia. The first experiment Campbell and Vollhardt conducted had three different parts. The first part was to test the hypothesis that non-violent protest is more supported than violent protest, and that conventional methods of protest receive less hostility from sympathizers. The second part of the experiment worked to consider how specific collective actions influence sympathizers perceptions of a situation in relation to Coal Seam Mining. The third part meant to connect illegitimacy and efficacy with endorsemet of future violent versus nonviolent actions via meditational analysis. The experiment was carried out on a sample size of 192 people who were recruited through a survey research firm that was looking for Queenslanders over the age of 18 years old. The reason they picked specifically from Queensland is because it is an area that is affected by mining and is witness to ongoing anti-mining protests. Out of the 192 people, 121 were female, 50 were male, and 20 opted not to specify. The average of of participants was 46.67 years and the average Queensland residency was 30.52 years. The experiment was a one-way design that compared the effects of the independent variables of violent protest, non-violent protest, and a no protest control condition on four dependent variables. The four dependent variables were: support for the protest, hostility toward the protestors, and endorsement of non-violent, and extreme methods. The mediator variables were the illegitimacy of the issue and group efficacy about resolving the Gas situation. The procedure included a questionnaire and reading of articles on protests, depending what group the subject was placed under. The results from experiment 1 show the possibility of protest violence being less supported than non-violent protest and that violence creates more hostility towards protestors involved. The experiment also showed that non-violence promotes future non-violence because it â€Å"effectively communicates the illegitimacy of the issue and bolsters the belief that action can be effective.† The experiment concludes that â€Å"adopting violence during a protest is, at best, a waste of time.† Experiment 2 measured the role of corruption in a government system or authority in moderating support for violent and non-violent protest. The experiment found that allegations of corruption have paradoxical effects on perceptions not only on specific events but also on broad social change. The end result of the study is that there is little support for strategic use for violence in protest, but that is important to remember the role of the media and that different political opponents might generate different sympathizing results. Maggie Campbell, Johanna Ray Vollhardt. Fighting the Good Fight The Relationship Between Belief in Evil and Support for Violent Policies. (15 July 2013) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vol 40. 16-33 Retrieved: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/40/1/16.full.pdf+html In this article, Campbell and Vollhardt focus on the consequences of using the terms of good and evil to label people and groups and how labels effect the willingness to interact with a person or group in a violent or non-violent manner. The study â€Å"aims to examine the social psychological underpinning of beliefs in good and evil, and investigate mechanisms through which these beliefs legitimize violence against those viewed as evil adversaries.† They also acknowledge that there are different levels at which people acknowledge evil; that there is no â€Å"true evil† and â€Å"true good†. The research done by Campbell and Vollhardt suggests that the individual’s definition of good and even might predict negative intergroup attitude and support for violence towards perceived enemies. They worked towards developing measures that asses individual differences in believes about good in evil â€Å"reliably and separately, as a construct in it’s own ri ght.† They used four different studies to analyze how the labels of good and evil work. The goal of the first study was to provide an initial empirical investigation of beliefs regarding good and evil, and endorsement of redemptive violence. The expectation was that beliefs on good and evil and the support of redemptive violence would predict more support for violent intergroup outcomes as compared to support for nonviolent outcomes. Campbell and Vollhardt hypothesized that there would be â€Å"an indirect effect of belief in evil on intergroup policy preferences†. For this study they collected data from 349 participants living in the United States, the majority of which being European Americans. 41% of the group identified with a religious group, while 58% of the group had at least a 4-year college degree. The study was conducted online, with participants coming in from Facebook, Craigslist and, listservs. Good and evil, endorsement of redemptive violence, measures of support for violent vs. nonviolent policies, and control variables were all measured on a seven point scale. This measure ended up mainly catching a belief in evil. Study 2 was meant to strengthen the measures on belief in good. Study 2 was based on an exploratory question of whether the belief in good or if a belief in a dichotomy would present itself. The study was conducted much in the same manner as study 1. The conclusion was that belief in good predicted two nonviolent outcomes, and that participants who believed in good viewed themselves as part of the non violent categories they supported. Study 3A and 3B were conducted to test if a belief in evil predicts support for violent policies when effects of other cognitive processes are controlled and also established the social psychological constructs that predicted such attitudes. These studies were also conducted online. Studies 3A and 3B provide us with empirical evidence to the argument that belief in evil in conceptually different from previously studied constructs, and that it also has a predictive power that can help explain support for violent policies. This study showed the importance in looking at the beliefs in good and evil to understand attitudes towards violent or nonviolent policies in intergroup conflict. There is a promise of real world implication with this study. Thomas Talhem, Jonathan Haidt, Shigehiro Oishi, Xuemin Zhang, Felicity F. Miao, Shimin Chen. Liberals Think More Analytically (More â€Å"WEIRD†) Than Conservatives. (17 Nov 2014 ) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vol 41. 250-267 Retrieved: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/41/2/250.full.pdf+html This study is designed to test whether liberals and conservatives legitimately think about the world as if they were form different cultures because of differences in the ways they process the same set of facts. They play with the idea of temporarily changing peoples cultural thought and thereby changing political opinions. They use the term WEIRD as a category. WEIRD stands for the portion of the population that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The researchers of this study argue that the liberals that fall within WEIRD are a even more remote part of the population. WEIRD people are considered outliers because they score analytically on measures of thought and perception as compared to the rest who think ore holistically or intuitively. They present the hypothesis that liberals think more analytically because liberal culture is more individualistic, with priority for individual identity instead of group. The study uses four reports that tie the relationship of politics to holistic-analytic thought. The first study brings cultural thought measure into political psychology, the second distinguishes social and economic politics, the third measures thought style with cognitive tests instead of self-report scales, and the fourth tests whether thought type causes political opinions by briefly changing people’s thought styles and then measuring their political opinion. The samples were US college subjects that naturally control for age and education, large internet samples to cover diverse demographic groups and allow for control of more demographic variables, and a sample from China that has a different political climate as compared to the United States. The first study used a triad task, and a framed-line task. These tasks were administered to the group of college studies and measured on a scale from 1 to 7. They found that social liberals had a more ‘Western’, analytic, cognitive, and perceptual style than their conservative American classmates. The socially conservative students were more relational, cognitive, and perceptual. Their styles of thinking were more ‘East Asian’. The researchers claim that study 1 add to evidence that there are cultural differences in cognition between people in the same nation. The second study was similar to the first, but it was ran on a large Internet group instead of one university campus. It replaced the information from study1 because it was a larger sample size. Study three used date on cultural differences between students in Northern and Southern China. It was a replication of the findings in the first two studies. An important difference was that the relationship between social politics and thought was only found in more developed areas. It did find that this is not just an American phenomenon. Study four looked at if thought style causes people to be liberal or conservative. Study 4 provided the first evidence of cultural thought style causing attitudes toward political opinions that were presented in a long-form article. The different samples gives researchers some evidence that the relationship between politics and thought is not only of one particular culture. Running Out of Nurses: Nursing Shortages in the Middle East Running Out of Nurses: Nursing Shortages in the Middle East Introduction Nursing is a challenged and dynamic profession. Struggles and challenges have accompanied the development of nursing profession through the previous decades. Although nursing was started with unorganized and weakly defined beginning, our sisters and brothers didnà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢t stop until nursing become respectful and recognized profession. Now in the twenty-first century, the most challengeable problem is nursing shortage which is considered a public concern because of its massive effect on the quality of care and on patient health and safety. The first nurse Nightingales concept was cause no harm to patients. This was the foundation for the scope of practice for nurses. Any obstacles that may result in threaten patient safety should not be ignored. (Cherry Jacob, 2002). Nursing shortage is an issue where the required number of nurses is much more than the supply. Nursing shortage has been reported as crisis due to its seriousness. In the moment of speaking there are 200000 vacant nursing positions worldwide and it is predicted to increase to one million or even more by 2020. 85% of hospitals have expressed concerns about nursing shortage and half of them have difficulties retaining and recruiting nurses. Moreover, the turnover rate among nurses is continuously rising. Recently it has reached 40% in some hospitals nationwide (Albro, 2008). This assignment has been done as a requirement for contemporary nursing course; it will discuss the history, reasons and impact of nursing shortage. Explore the issue of recruiting foreign nurses and the issue of nursing shortage in the Middle East. History Experiencing shortage of nursing had started long time ago. Opening the first school in nursing in the US was the result of difficulty in finding adequate number and trained nurses to hand round in Civil war. After World War 2 the medical services that were provided had significantly changed resulting in huge increase in the number of hospitals and creating special care unit which generate the need for more nurses to serve. That time educational centres for nursing start to appear to educate and train nurses in order to overcome the shortage of nurses. Now the evidence shows that all countries worldwide suffer from nursing shortage and it is an international concern which needs to be highlighted and managed as soon as possible (Andrews Dziegielewski, 2005). Contributing Factors In 1980s it was easy to identify the reasons behind nursing shortage: increase the number of hospitals, length of hospital stay and aging population. Although these reasons are true, this is not the whole picture. It is more complex than that Age Nursing has experienced highest registering rate in 1960s-1970s. Because of new job opportunities opened in 1980s-1990s, smaller number of women registered. As a result of that, the average age of RN nowadays is 45 or more. Most of the middle aged nurses will reach retirement age between 2005-2010 (Abualrub, 2005). Nursing image Over the years nurses have developed concerns about their image in the society. Nursing has been differently described within the population as saints or sinner, admire or ignore, powerless or powerful. Can we say nursing shortage result from nursing image or nursing image result from nursing shortage? These two are highly related. Above that the education preparation for nurses differ 2 years associate degree, 3 years diploma and 4 years baccalaureate. These levels of education have made people not value nursing as a profession. Having a bachelor degree isnt necessary when you can be qualified to work after 3 or 2 years. This leads to discourage people to enter nursing and undervalue it (Daly, Speedy Jackson, 2003). Job satisfaction The reasons why nurses have the intention to leave nursing the career and why the turnover rate is increasing is mainly due to job dissatisfaction. Common reasons nationwide are over load, schedule changes, lack of appreciation and less family time. The nursing field doesnt offer the chance for frustrated nurses to speak out and this nourishes the dissatisfaction feeling. Lack of satisfaction makes nursing not an attractive profession for young people. More than 50% of working nurses will not advice their children or sisters to enter nursing (Diana, 2005). Faculty shortage Linda, Clarke Silber (2003) did a study that showed a strong relation between nursing education and patient mortality rate. Education plays a role in providing high quality care. 19% is the mortality rate in hospitals that have 60% of nurses with bachelor degree where it is higher in hospitals with only 20% nurses having bachelor. Lack of nursing faculty that provide proper education for the demand of bachelor graduating nurses directly affect the nursing shortage leading to directly affect patient safety. Nursing institutions witness an increase of registration, American Association of Colleges of nursing state that 13% increase of enrolment rate between 2004-2005. This increase needs an increase in nursing schools and clinical settings to educate these students. If there is not enough nursing faculty the condition will be worse. According to AACN 2005 nursing schools have rejected 41683 qualified applications. The main reason was having not enough nursing faculty, clinical areas and preceptors to educate this number of students (Allen, 2008). Implication of Shortage No doubt nursing shortage will have a negative impact on health care system. Nursing shortage forces hospitals to impose mandatory and unsafe overtime on nurses, increase responsibilities and workload and create floating nurse. All these contribute to job dissatisfaction and decrease quality care (Goodin, 2003). On patient Linda, Clarke Silber (2003) conducted study to show the relation between nurse work load and mortality rate. 50% of hospitals worldwide have 5:1 patient to nurse ratio. The study shows if the ratio is 6:1 or more, the risk for patient death will be 14%. If it is more than 8, the risk will be 31%. The number of medical errors is rising in a dangerous rate. One of the associated factors is nursing shortage. Study done by health resources and services shows a strong relation between number of staff and medication errors. These errors may have undesirable effect on patient health (Goodin, 2003) On nurses Not enough staff intensifies the level of stress of nurses. Overtimes, increase responsibilities and emotional stress promotes increase staff absenteeism, impair decision making ability and increase level of turnover. More than 75% of RNs believe that their job quality delivered to patient is strongly affected by the shortage. Three from four nurses feel is frustrating, discouraging and disappointment when you unable to provide proper nursing care, just because of there is not enough nurses in the floor. (Revira, 2009). Shortage remedy As a remedy for nursing shortage health care societies have started to hire foreign nurses. Phenomena of hiring foreign nurses has been introduced and practiced for almost 50 years (Leavitt, Mason chaffee, 2007). Recruiting foreign nurses is specifically problematic as a technique to resolve this shortage simply for two reasons. First, the shortage is global issue; means the country which sent her nurses abroad intensified the shortage within its health care system. Second, hiring foreign nurses cost much more than hiring home graduate. This related to the coast of recruiting and training them into the organization (Cherry Jacob, 2002). . Recruitment and retaining RNs Nursing associations are constantly working in order to recruit nurses as much as they can. Recruitment strategies should focus on attracting young nurses. Efforts should be maximized to spread the awareness among school aged students in order to make them consider nursing as a career or a profession (Yoho, Timpanaro Fowler, 2006).. Retention of professional nurses have helped the organization to overcome the shortage. To retain experienced nurses organizations should consider staff needs, In response to that, magnet hospitals were created. Hospitals which they focus in developing proper retention strategies, mainly by enhance nurses autonomy and support decision making ability. Magnet program aim to increase job satisfaction, decrease turnover and promote encouraging environment. Now magnet considered the most effective programme in US for retaining and recruiting nurses ( Valerie, Dreachslin, 2007) Nursing shortage in the Arab world The image of nursing as a profession in the Arab world is significantly improving. The status of nursing will be addressed from three dimensions: practice, education and image. Nursing education in the Arab world causes a lot of confusion due to the different educational levels. The minimum accepted educational degrees to enter the profession can be associated degree (2 years) or diploma degree (3 years) while in the US the bachelor is the minimum accepted degree. Moreover, some countries dont offer bachelor degree where other countries have recently started bachelor program like UAE. Arab world also tend to recruit foreign nurses especially gulf countries to overcome the shortage. Nursing image plays a big role in promoting the shortage in the Arab world. Most of the population doesnt prefer their sisters or daughters to choose nursing as a profession (Shukri, 2005). Conclusion Nursing shortage is an international problem which needs to be solved urgently. All the reasons and impacts of nursing shortage are now internationally known and it cant be ignored any more. There are many reasons that could lead to this problem, few of them were addressed: Age, nursing image, job satisfaction and faculty shortage. Leaders of nursing in practice and in academia should work to gather to develops plans enhance the growth of nursing staff. Impacts of nursing shortage cant be denied because it has a dangerous effect on patients health and on nurses. The practice of hiring foreign nurses doesnt help in solving nursing shortage. Recruiting and retaining strategies should be carefully studied in order to increase the number of working nurses. The shortage in the Arab world is a noticeable problem in which a lot of efforts need to be done in many areas to overcome this shortage.