Deciding between moral priorities and COVID-19 avoiding behaviors: A moral foundations vignette study.

Novel moral norms peculiar to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in tension between maintaining one's preexisting moral priorities (e.g., loyalty to one's family and human freedoms) and avoiding contraction of the COVID-19 disease and SARS COVID-2 virus. By drawing on moral foundations theory, the current study questioned how the COVID-19 pandemic (or health threat salience in general) affects moral decision making. With two consecutive pilot tests on three different samples (ns ≈ 40), we prepared our own sets of moral foundation vignettes which were contextualized on three levels of health threats: the COVID-19 threat, the non-COVID-19 health threat, and no threat. We compared the wrongness ratings of those transgressions in the main study (N = 396, M age = 22.47). The results showed that the acceptability of violations increased as the disease threat contextually increased, and the fairness, care, and purity foundations emerged as the most relevant moral concerns in the face of the disease threat. Additionally, participants' general binding moral foundation scores consistently predicted their evaluations of binding morality vignettes independent of the degree of the health threat. However, as the disease threat increased in the scenarios, pre-existing individuating morality scores lost their predictive power for care violations but not for fairness violations. The current findings imply the importance of contextual factors in moral decision making. Accordingly, we conclude that people make implicit cost-benefit analysis in arriving at a moral decision in health threatening contexts. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01941-y.

Navigating Biases and Distrust of Systems: American and Canadian Intimate Partner Violence Service Providers' Experiences with Trans and Immigrant Women Clients

To date, very little is known about intimate partner violence (IPV) service providers' experiences serving trans and immigrant women (IPV) survivors and their barriers in reporting and/or accessing formal services. Employingconstructivist grounded theory, two vignettes were constructed–one featuring a trans woman and the other an immigrant woman, both seeking IPV services. American and Canadian IPV service providers responded to open-ended survey questions about both scenarios, resulting in several emergent themes including, but not limited to: service provider biases, shelter conflicts, and distrust of systems. Policy implications and future research are also addressed. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Learning from each other: leaders' social representations of career beginners and career beginners' self-assessment

Today's youth face prejudice and stereotyping in the workplace;in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, their prevalence and strength may increase. We conducted a qualitative study of social representations of key exchange partners - leaders and career beginners. In the first phase, we conducted semi-structured interviews to identify the dominant social representations that small business leaders (N = 9) hold about career beginners. In the second phase, we examined how future career beginners (N = 26) responded to five hypothetical work situations based on the leaders' social representations. The social exchange partners shared the narrative that career growth, advancement, and financial incentives are important motivators for career beginners, but contradicted each other in their accounts of career beginners' initiative levels and in their accounts of preferred leadership styles. The findings help to raise awareness of the mutual representations and expectations of different age groups in the work context.

Between Waves: LINC Instructors' Perspectives on Pandemic Teaching

The 2020 outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic imposed emergency remote teaching on adult English as a second language (ESL) programs globally, creating unprecedented challenges not only for language learners but also for instructors. Immense difficulties were produced in the collision between a biological hazard (the novel coronavirus) and the power-inflected social structures that organize language teaching in different locales. In this paper I explore some impacts of the pandemic on three instructors in the single largest adult ESL program in Canada, Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). Grounded in an account of the historical origins and development of the LINC program, a reflexive thematic analysis of instructor responses to vignettes of resonant challenges identified three major issues that were intensified by the pandemic: navigating digital inequities, balancing the teaching of digital literacies and language teaching in an accountability framework, and managing boundaries and expectations. These results are contextualized in the larger conversations around LINC and adult ESL programming globally, and some implications and new directions for the post-pandemic landscape now visible on the horizon are also considered.

On "Being There" in a Pandemic: Are Classrooms without Bodies Still "Real" Places of Learning?

In March 2020, schools and universities were abruptly shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as abruptly as they shut down, they were moved to fully online instruction. It was and continues to be an adjustment from classrooms with bodies to online classrooms without bodies, and now in-person classrooms with distanced masked bodies, or some combination of the two. As such, a discourse has appeared decrying the absence of what we know was the "real" educational environment. In this commentary, I use a series of vignettes to illuminate the ontological and epistemological dilemma of this discourse and then bring it into dialogue with literature and theory in order to present an argument that complexifies the assumption that real learning is in-person learning.

[Longer Unemployment Insurance Benefits in Times of Crisis? Covid-19 and the Appropriate Maximum Benefit Duration]. / Längeres Arbeitslosengeld in der Krise? Covid-19 und die angemessene maximale Bezugsdauer.

This article deals with the question of which unemployment benefit durations are considered fair for which groups. In addition, it examines the extent to which individuals consider longer unemployment insurance benefit durations to be appropriate in times of economic crisis, such as the current situation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Longer reference periods can stabilize the income situation of benefit recipients and can provide time to search for an adequate job and thus increase matching quality. However, they also initially reduce the pressure to look for a job, and they lengthen the period of unemployment in the longer term. Using survey data from two online surveys done in November 2019 and during the crisis in May 2020, we examine which unemployment benefit durations employees consider appropriate. For this purpose, we presented vignettes to the survey participants describing hypothetical unemployed people whose characteristics varied randomly. The results show that the same respondents considered similar reference periods to be appropriate at both dates. In addition, the respondents took into account criteria of contribution as well as neediness when assessing the appropriate duration of benefits for the unemployed. Characteristics such as the age of the unemployed and any existing culpability, life benefits, or contribution periods influenced the duration of the benefit receipt that respondents judged to be appropriate.