Sources of anti-immigrant sentiments in Western democracies: A contextual approach.

The electoral success of nativist parties in several Western democracies in the last decade surprised many political operators and academics alike, in part due to an insufficient understanding of the confluence of triggers of anti-immigrant sentiments. The extent of knowledge has since improved with notable strides made at the intersection of multiple sources of intolerant attitudes, such as between realistic and symbolic threat, threat perception and belief systems, individual-level and group-level characteristics, and biological and cultural determinants. By contextualizing the literature in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia, we highlight region specificity as another consideration for future research. An appreciation for the complex sources of anti-immigrant sentiments should bring a new level of sophistication to diversity management strategies.

Discover Your Inner Strength: A Positive Psychological Approach to Bolster Resilience and Address Radicalization.

The article reports initial attempts to evaluate a new positive psychological approach to bolster resilience among Muslims in the Netherlands. The approach uses Quranic texts and principles from mental contrasting and implementation intentions (MCII) to encourage Muslims in the Netherlands to reflect in groups on appropriate responses to challenges they are facing. The participants are inspired by Quranic texts and encouraged to write responses to specific challenges in the form of IF-THEN rules and to practice these IF-THEN rules for several weeks. Two studies indicate that this approach increases personal growth initiative. The implications of these findings for the MCII literature and prevention/countering violent extremism are discussed.

Terror in time: extending culturomics to address basic terror management mechanisms.

Building on Google's efforts to scan millions of books, this article introduces methodology using a database of annual word frequencies of the 40,000 most frequently occurring words in the American literature between 1800 and 2009. The current paper uses this methodology to replicate and identify terror management processes in historical context. Variation in frequencies of word usage of constructs relevant to terror management theory (e.g. death, worldview, self-esteem, relationships) are investigated over a time period of 209 years. Study 1 corroborated previous TMT findings and demonstrated that word use of constructs related to death and of constructs related to patriotism and romantic relationships significantly co-vary over time. Study 2 showed that the use of the word "death" most strongly co-varies over time with the use of medical constructs, but also co-varies with the use of constructs related to violence, relationships, religion, positive sentiment, and negative sentiment. Study 3 found that a change in the use of death related words is associated with an increase in the use of fear related words, but not in anxiety related words. Results indicate that the described methodology generates valuable insights regarding terror management theory and provide new perspectives for theoretical advances.

Missed cases in the detection of child abuse based on parental characteristics in the emergency department (the Hague Protocol).

INTRODUCTION: We aimed to assess the number of "missed cases" in the detection of child abuse based on the Hague Protocol. This protocol considers 3 parental characteristics of ED adult patients to identify child abuse: (1) domestic violence, (2) intoxication, and (3) suicide attempt or auto-mutilation. METHODS: This study focuses on parents whose children should have been referred to the Reporting Centre for Child Abuse and Neglect (RCCAN) in the Hague, the Netherlands, according to the guidelines of the Hague Protocol. Data were collected from all referrals by the Medical Centre Haaglanden (Medisch Centrum Haaglanden) to the RCCAN in the Hague between July 1 and December 31, 2011. The hospital's database was searched to determine whether the parents had visited the emergency department in the 12 months before their child's referral to the RCCAN. RESULTS: Eight missed cases out of 120 cases were found. The reasons for not referring were as follows: forgetting to ask about children and assuming that it was not necessary to refer children if parents indicated that they were already receiving some form of family support. DISCUSSION: Barriers to identifying missing cases could be relatively easy to overcome. Regular training of emergency nurses and an automated alert in the electronic health record to prompt clinicians and emergency nurses may help prevent cases being missed in the future.

Detecting child abuse based on parental characteristics: does the Hague Protocol cause parents to avoid the emergency department?

OBJECTIVES: The Hague Protocol is used by professionals at the adult Emergency Departments (ED) in The Netherlands to detect child abuse based on three parental characteristics: (1) domestic violence, (2) substance abuse or (3) suicide attempt or self-harm. After detection, a referral is made to the Reporting Center for Child Abuse and Neglect (RCCAN). This study investigates whether implementing this Protocol will lead parents to avoid medical care. METHOD: We compared the number of patients (for whom the Protocol applied) who attended the ED prior to implementation with those attending after implementation. We conducted telephone interviews (n = 14) with parents whose children were referred to the RCCAN to investigate their experience with the procedure. RESULTS: We found no decline in the number of patients, included in the Protocol, visiting the ED during the 4 year implementation period (2008-2011). Most parents (n = 10 of the 14 interviewed) were positive and stated that they would, if necessary, re-attend the ED with the same complaints in the future. CONCLUSION: ED nurses and doctors referring children based on parental characteristics do not have to fear losing these families as patients.

What parental characteristics can predict child maltreatment at the Emergency Department? Considering expansion of the Hague Protocol.

The Hague Protocol considers three parental characteristics of Emergency Department adult patients to identify child abuse: (a) domestic violence, (b) intoxication, and (c) suicide attempt or auto mutilation. This study investigated whether additional parental characteristics could be included to improve the chance of detection. Using a nested case-control design, we compared parents identified as child abusers who were missed by the Protocol with a matched group of nonabusing parents. The parental characteristics used were, among others, all physical injuries possibly resulting from domestic violence, psychological, or mental complaints that might indicate elevated domestic stress levels and the number of Emergency Department visits during the previous year. None of the characteristics were statistically significantly associated with child abuse. The Hague Protocol will not be improved by adding one or more of the characteristics that were investigated.

Facilitators and barriers to the successful implementation of a protocol to detect child abuse based on parental characteristics.

To determine the critical facilitating and impeding factors underlying successful implementation of a method to detect child abuse based on parental rather than child characteristics known as the Hague Protocol. The original implementation region of the protocol (The Hague) was compared to a new implementation region (Friesland), using analysis of referrals, focus group interviews (n=6) at the Emergency departments (ED) and at the Reporting Centers for Child abuse and Neglect (RCCAN) as well as questionnaires (n=76) at the EDs. Implementation of the Hague Protocol substantially increased the number of referrals to the RCCAN in both regions. In Friesland, the new implementation region, the number of referrals increased from 2 out of 92,464 patients (three per 100,000) to 108 out of 167,037 patients (62 per 100,000). However in Friesland, child abuse was confirmed in a substantially lower percentage of cases relative to the initial implementation region (62% vs. 91%, respectively). Follow-up analyses suggest that this lower positive predictive value may be due to the lack of training for RCCAN professionals concerning the Hague Protocol. The focus group interviews and questionnaires point to time limitations as the main impediment for implementation, whereas an implementation coach has been mentioned as the most important facilitating factor for success. The Hague Protocol can be used to detect child abuse beyond the initial implementation region. However, training is essential in order to assure a consistent evaluation by the RCCAN.

Interdependent self-construals mitigate the fear of death and augment the willingness to become a martyr.

Humans are motivated by a quest for significance that is threatened by the inevitability of death. However, individuals with interdependent self-construals, self-representations that reflect embeddedness with and connection to others, are able to extend themselves through time and space through their linkage to a larger social group. The present set of 5 experiments tested the hypotheses that individuals primed with an interdependent self-construal would fear death less and would be more willing to face harm for the sake of the group than individuals with an independent self-construal, that is, self-representations that reflect autonomy and independence from others ("I have self-control"). The results show that interdependent self-construals, compared to independent self-construals, attenuate death anxiety, reduce the avoidance of death, increase the approach to death-related stimuli, induce a greater willingness to become a martyr, and induce a greater willingness to sacrifice the self for other members of important groups.

Smearing the opposition: implicit and explicit stigmatization of the 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates and the current U.S. President.

Four studies investigated whether political allegiance and salience of outgroup membership contribute to the phenomenon of acceptance of false, stigmatizing information (smears) about political candidates. Studies 1-3 were conducted in the month prior to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election and together demonstrated that pre-standing opposition to John McCain or Barack Obama, as well as the situational salience of differentiating social categories (i.e., for Obama, race; for McCain, age), contributed to the implicit activation and explicit endorsement of smearing labels (i.e., Obama is Muslim; McCain is senile). The influence of salient differentiating categories on smear acceptance was particularly pronounced among politically undecided individuals. Study 4 clarified that social category differences heighten smear acceptance, even if the salient category is semantically unrelated to the smearing label, showing that, approximately 1 year after the election, the salience of race amplified belief that Obama is a socialist among undecided people and McCain supporters. Taken together, these findings suggest that, at both implicit and explicit cognitive levels, social category differences and political allegiance contribute to acceptance of smears against political candidates.

Are associative and propositional processes qualitatively distinct? Comment on Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006).

The authors comment on B. Gawronski and G. V. Bodenhausen's (2006) associative-propositional evaluation model of implicit and explicit attitudes by examining the claims that (a) truth value is attached to propositions but not to associations; (b) pattern activation is qualitatively different from syllogistic structure of arguments; and (c) Pavlovian conditioning may be propositional, whereas evaluative conditioning is not. They conclude that despite surface dissimilarities between implicit and explicit attitudes both may be mediated by the same underlying process.

Literal and symbolic immortality: the effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience.

Three studies investigated the effect of encouraging participants to believe in an afterlife on the relationship between mortality salience and self-esteem striving. Participants were exposed to essays arguing either in favor of or against the existence of an afterlife, and reminded about death or a control topic. Mortality salience led to increased accuracy ratings of a positive personality description (Studies 1 and 2) and increased striving for and defense of values (Study 3) among participants who read the essay arguing against an afterlife, but not among participants who read the essay in favor of it. The implications for the terror management analysis of self-esteem, the appeal of immortality beliefs, and the interplay between self-esteem striving and spiritual pursuits are discussed.