Discursive constructions of student midwives' professional identities: A discourse analysis

BACKGROUND

The construction and performance of professional identity is significant to broader socio-cultural understandings of who 'professionals' are and what they do. Importantly, it is also implicated in the development and enactment of policy, regulation, education, and professional practice. Professional identity is linked to self-esteem, self-efficacy, professional value, confidence and success. The salience of this in relation to midwifery practice is highly significant; aspects of autonomy, confidence, competence, responsibility, and accountability are all implicated in the provision of safe and effective care.

AIM

To explore how student midwives are constructed in the discourses of policy, professionalism, and learning, to provide new perspectives to inform, policy, education, and practice.

METHODS

An adapted critical discourse analysis of the United Kingdom (UK) Nursing and Midwifery Council's 2009 Standards for pre-registration midwifery education, using a three-step process: exploring discourse at the level of (1) discursive practice (2) linguistic features of the text, and (3) social practice.

FINDINGS/ DISCUSSION

The discourses that relate to midwifery education and practice emerge within socio-political and historical contexts. Constructions of identity are articulated through a rule-bound framework which includes competence, confidence and 'good health and good character'. There is a requirement for midwives to 'be' responsible, accountable, autonomous, professional, competent, and confident. Regulatory power is reinforced through medico-legal discourses, with the status of midwifery discursively presented as inferior to medicine.

CONCLUSION

According to the Standards, midwives must be a lot of things in their role and function. The Standards' discourses are authoritative, legislative and controlling, creating an ideology about professional status and agency which constructs an 'imaginary autonomy'; becoming a midwife is more automatic (with the perception of control), than agentic. All of which has significance for the social practice of midwifery.

TWEETABLE ABSTRACT

'How are midwives made? Discursive constructions of student midwives' professional identities: a discourse analysis.

Is being anti-vegan a distinct dietarian identity? An investigation with omnivores, vegans, and self-identified "anti-vegans"

Adding to research on the form and content of anti-vegan sentiment, recent scholarship has identified a group of individuals who self-subscribe as "anti-vegan". Here, we sought to determine whether anti-veganism might reflect a distinct dietarian identity with its own unique ideological profile. Two-hundred and fourteen vegans, 732 omnivores, and 222 self-identified "anti-vegans" were assessed using a survey methodology that included the Dietarian Identity Questionnaire and ideological markers related to dark humour, social dominance orientation (SDO), speciesism, male-role norms, moral relativism, and attitudes toward science. Our analysis revealed a dietarian identity unique to anti-vegans. The dietary patterns of anti-vegans were more central to their identity than for omnivores, though marginally lower than vegans. Like vegans, anti-vegans scored highly on dietarian measures of private regard and personal dietary motivations, and lower than omnivores on public regard. The diets of anti-vegans were more morally motivated than omnivores. However, anti-vegans scored higher than both omnivores and vegans on a number of ideological measures including dark humour, SDO, speciesism, male-role norms, moral relativism, and distrust of science. Somewhat surprising, anti-vegans held greater trust than omnivores in the science of plant-based nutrition. We discuss the unique dietarian identities of anti-vegans, considering both intra-group differences of omnivores and anti-vegans (e.g., in right-wing ideology), and inter-group similarities of vegans and anti-vegans (e.g., in diet centrality).

Is there a "childless vote" in Europe?

We examined associations between childlessness and voting in Europe. We used cross-sectional European Social Survey data from 20 countries (n = 37,623). Our results suggest that there is a "childless vote" in Europe. Supporting our pre-registered hypothesis, childless individuals voted for parties that had visibly positioned themselves at the Green-Alternative-Libertarian (GAL) pole of the GAL-TAN (GAL vs. Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist) ideological dimension. The pre-registered explorative analyses of associations between childlessness and economic left-right ideology or other policy positions of the party for which the individual had voted did not yield results. Explorative analyses suggested in the review process showed that self-rated religiosity was independently associated with childlessness, but ideological left-right self-placement or self-ratings of political attitudes were not. Our results suggest a new demographic prognostic of vote choice, thus adding to the literature on demographic processes associated with political dynamics.

Collective nostalgia and political ideology

Collective nostalgia is a form of nostalgia that is contingent upon thinking of oneself in terms of a particular social identity. Research has focused in particular on collective nostalgia for a nation's past. Here, I propose that conservatives and others on the right side of the political spectrum experience stronger collective nostalgia for their nation's past than liberals and those on the left. I first explain the roots of this prediction in conservative political philosophy, review empirical evidence in favor of that idea, and summarize findings that show the significance of this link for policy support. Finally, I review and discuss evidence that qualifies the link between conservatism and collective nostalgia.

Short version of the right-wing authoritarianism scale for the Brazilian context

Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is a central predictor of distinct phenomena such as prejudice, voting behavior, corruption, conspiratory beliefs and dietary habits. Given its theoretical and practical relevance, researchers have incorporated RWA measures in large-scale surveys but their length can be an impediment. Although short RWA scales exist, none consider the cultural variability of the RWA structure in non-WEIRD contexts such as Brazil. Here, we report data from five cross-sectional and longitudinal Brazilian samples (N_total = 2,493) used to develop a short RWA version that considers cross-cultural specificities of the Brazilian context, where an alternative four-factor model was observed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed a four-factor structure comprising Authoritarianism, Traditionalism, Submission to Authority and Contestation to Authority dimensions. Six-month longitudinal results indicated that Authoritarianism and Traditionalism are more stable than both Submission and Contestation to Authority. Correlations between these dimensions and right-wing political self-categorization were statistically equivalent for the full 34-item RWA scale version and the new 12-item version. Results confirm the psychometric properties of the four-factor, 12-item RWA scale in this cultural context.

The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19

In a representative sample of the U.S. population during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigate how prosociality and ideology interact in their relationship with health-protecting behavior and trust in the government to handle the crisis. We find that an experimental measure of prosociality based on standard economic games positively relates to protective behavior. Conservatives are less compliant with COVID-19-related behavioral restrictions than liberals and evaluate the government's handling of the crisis significantly more positively. We show that prosociality does not mediate the impact of political ideology. This finding means that conservatives are less compliant with protective health guidelines - independent of differences in prosociality between both ideological camps. Behavioral differences between liberals and conservatives are roughly only one-fourth of the size of their differences in judging the government's crisis management. This result suggests that Americans were more polarized in their political views than in their acceptance of public health advice.

Dismantling medical education's incompatible ideology

More than anything, I care about people. I am concerned about how the practices, structures, values, and ways of thinking embedded in medical education-i.e. our ideology-shape the experiences of people who work in our field. Despite being largely blind to its effects, ideology is powerfully at play in medical education-creating social identities, generating relationship patterns, justifying specific conduct, and maintaining and reproducing social order. Every educational system-including the entire medical education continuum-perpetuates ideology. We train future generations of physicians to uphold behavioral expectations and to maintain a specific social order. However, ideology is not always consistent. Individual aspects of our ideology can be incompatible, and, when they are, it is the people who carry the burden of the resulting tensions. Fortunately, ideology is maintained by our decisions and actions; therefore, we can change our decisions and thereby modify the ideology to work for us, not against us.[Box: see text].

The role of ideology in creating new nations in the USSR and strengthening a centralised state-The example of the Dungans in central Asia

This paper describes the role of the totalitarian state in changing ethnic identity. To solve the question of nationality, the Soviet Union drew upon the ideologies of ultra-radical theorists of the 19th century, whose goal was to change society by removing several major institutions - for example, through the liquidation of family or private property, in addition to creating a national group. Numerous paradoxes emerged when putting these initial theories into practice because they were full of internal contradictions. The example of the Dungans shows how the state created a new ethnic group, which it supported in every possible way, and then, in the next phase, it clearly persecuted this ethnic group. In the implementation of state interventions, it is clear that the main declared elements of ethnic identity are extremely volatile and their meaning varies considerably. Whereas earlier Soviet ideology sought to present the Dungans as a group vastly different from its ancestors in China, contemporary Chinese ideology emphasises the similarities between the two groups.

US foreign policy elites and the great rejuvenation of the ideological China threat: The role of rhetoric and the ideologization of geopolitical threats

Since 2018, US foreign policy elites have portrayed China as the gravest threat to their country. Why was China predominantly cast as an ideological threat, even though other discursive formulations, such as a geopolitical threat, were plausible and available? Existing major IR theories on threat perpcetions struggle to address these questions. In this article, we draw from rhetoric and public legitimation scholarship to argue that the mobilization of adjacent policy debates was key to mainstream the representation of China as an ideological threat. By mobilizing debates on Russia and the soft power and sharp power concepts, a minority view in US foreign policy with a longstanding ambition to get tough on China established a seemingly natural link between liberal internationalism and an ideologically threatening China. Liberal foreign policy elites who originally opposed a realpolitik view of China could now subsume a geopolitical threat into an ideological one reminiscent of US-Soviet Cold War rivalry. This constituted a necessary catalyst to align most foreign policy elites to understand China as the gravest threat to the United States, at a time when China's capabilities and behaviour, coupled with a deep sense of insecurity regarding America's place in the world, provided the necessary backdrop.

Disagreement as context for science-civic learning: an analysis of discursive resources brought to bear by high school science students

Amid a broader sociopolitical milieu of division, disagreement, and uncivil debate, this study investigates instances of disagreement among students in a high school science classroom as they attempt to answer the civic question of what should we do about climate change, a long contentious topic in the USA. Using a theoretical framework that frames relational practices and ideological positions as discursive resources, this study analyzes the resources youth bring to bear within disagreement. Through discourse analysis and qualitative coding of naturalistic moments of disagreement, this study shows that youth leverage diverse constellations of discursive resources when disagreeing over science-civic matters. From this analysis, I suggest paths forward in terms of research and practice in efforts to prepare young people for science-civic participation that will inevitably involve disagreement with others in one's community.

Estimating ideology and polarization in European countries using Facebook data

Researchers have studied political ideology and polarization in many different contexts since their effects are usually closely related to aspects and actions of individuals and societies. Hence, being able to estimate and measure the changes in political ideology and polarization is crucial for researchers, stakeholders, and the general public. In this paper, we model the ideology and polarization of 28 countries (the 27 EU member states plus the UK) using Facebook public posts from political parties' Facebook pages. We collected a three-year dataset from 2019 to 2021 with information from 234 political parties' Facebook pages and took advantage of the EU parliament elections of May 2019 to create our models. Our methodology works across 28 countries and benefits from being a low-cost running process that measures ideology and polarization at a high-resolution time scale. The results show our models are pretty accurate when validating them against 19 individual countries' elections as ground truth. Moreover, to make our results available to the research community, stakeholders, and individuals interested in politics, the last contribution of our paper is a website including detailed information about the political parties in our dataset. It also includes the temporal evolution of our ideology and polarization estimations. Therefore, our work delivers a novel tool that uses Facebook public data to create country metrics useful for different purposes. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior work in the literature offering a solution that measures the ideology and polarization of all EU + UK countries.

Responsibility in Medical Sociology: A Second, Reflexive Look

Personal responsibility has emerged as an important element in many countries' public health planning, and has attracted substantial debate in public health discourse. Contemporary medical sociology typically resists such "responsibilization" as victim-blaming, by privileged elites, that obscures important structural factors and inequities. This paper, based primarily on a broad review of how contemporary Anglophone medical sociology literatures treat responsibility and blame, points out advantages of taking responsibility seriously, particularly from the individual's perspective. These advantages include: empowerment; responsibility-as-coping-mechanism; moral dignity; and the pragmatic logic of doing for oneself, rather than passively awaiting societal reforms. We also offer possible reasons why sociologists and their subjects view these issues so differently, and suggest some areas for future research.

Politicizing COVID-19 Lingua in Western and Arab Newspapers: A Critical Discourse Analysis

COVID-19 has struck the world in an unprecedented way. Countries quickly tried to counter the rapid spread of the virus by imposing strict measures and national lockdowns. At the same time, some governments took advantage of the pandemic to besmirch their opponents. We utilize van Dijk (J Polit Ideol 11(2):115-140 2006) critical discourse analysis model to investigate how newspaper headlines reacted to COVID-19 from through ideological lenses. Results show that while the US implied that China is the origin of the virus, headlines in Arab newspapers showed that Saudi Arabia blamed travel to Iran for the early increases of COVID-19 cases.

Pro-Diversity Beliefs and the Diverse Person's Burden

Pro-diversity beliefs hold that greater diversity leads to better results in academia, business, politics and a variety of other contexts. This paper explores the possibility that pro-diversity beliefs can generate unfair expectations that marginalized people produce distinctive bonuses, a phenomenon we refer to as the "diverse person's burden". We suggest that a normic conception of diversity, according to which non-diversity entails social privilege, together with empirical research on psychological entitlement suggests an explanation of how the diverse person's burden can arise in many social settings. We also suggest structural and institutional remedies to address the diverse person's burden, as well as an individual virtue we label positional awareness.

Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?

A sizable literature tracing back to Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style (1964) argues that Republicans and conservatives are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than Democrats and liberals. However, the evidence for this proposition is mixed. Since conspiracy theory beliefs are associated with dangerous orientations and behaviors, it is imperative that social scientists better understand the connection between conspiracy theories and political orientations. Employing 20 surveys of Americans from 2012 to 2021 (total n = 37,776), as well as surveys of 20 additional countries spanning six continents (total n = 26,416), we undertake an expansive investigation of the asymmetry thesis. First, we examine the relationship between beliefs in 52 conspiracy theories and both partisanship and ideology in the U.S.; this analysis is buttressed by an examination of beliefs in 11 conspiracy theories across 20 more countries. In our second test, we hold constant the content of the conspiracy theories investigated-manipulating only the partisanship of the theorized villains-to decipher whether those on the left or right are more likely to accuse political out-groups of conspiring. Finally, we inspect correlations between political orientations and the general predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories over the span of a decade. In no instance do we observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry. Instead, the strength and direction of the relationship between political orientations and conspiricism is dependent on the characteristics of the specific conspiracy beliefs employed by researchers and the socio-political context in which those ideas are considered.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09812-3.

Mothers' Domestic Responsibilities and Well-Being During the COVID-19 Lockdown: The Moderating Role of Gender Essentialist Beliefs About Parenthood

The present work investigates how the increased domestic responsibilities created by the Spring 2020 lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway and gender ideologies relate to the well-being of mothers with elementary school children. In June 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional online study including current and retrospective measures with 180 mothers (M age = 39.96 years, SD = 6.11) of elementary school children across Norway. First, in line with earlier research on the strain of the pandemic on parents, and especially mothers, we found that Norwegian mothers' well-being during the lockdown significantly declined compared to before the lockdown (both measured retrospectively). Furthermore, mothers' well-being after the Spring 2020 lockdown did not immediately return to pre-lockdown levels. Finally, we predicted that gender ideologies (i.e., essentialist beliefs about parenthood) would exacerbate the negative impact of increased domestic responsibilities (i.e., childcare and housework) on mothers' well-being (i.e., higher standard-higher stress hypothesis). As predicted, for mothers who more strongly endorsed the belief that mothers are instinctively and innately better caretakers than fathers, perceptions of increased domestic responsibilities were associated with lower well-being post-lockdown. These findings point to the specific challenges mothers face in times of crisis, and the importance of addressing and confronting seemingly benevolent ideologies about motherhood that place additional burdens on women.

Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines

OBJECTIVE

Risk assessment and response is important for understanding human behavior. The divisive context surrounding the coronavirus pandemic inspires our exploration of risk perceptions and the polarization of mitigation practices (i.e., the degree to which the behaviors of people on the political "Left" diverge from those on the "Right"). Specifically, we investigate the extent to which the political polarization of willingness to comply with mitigation behaviors changes with risk perceptions.

METHOD

Analyses use data from two sources: an original dataset of Twitter posts and a nationally-representative survey. In the Twitter data, negative binomial regression models are used to predict mitigation intent measured using tweet counts. In the survey data, logit models predict self-reported mitigation behavior (vaccination, masking, and social distancing).

RESULTS

Findings converged across both datasets, supporting the idea that the links between political orientation and willingness to follow mitigation guidelines depend on perceived risk. People on the Left are more inclined than their Right-oriented colleagues to follow guidelines, but this polarization tends to decrease as the perceived risk of COVID-19 intensifies. Additionally, we find evidence that exposure to COVID-19 infections sends ambiguous signals about the risk of the virus while COVID-19 related deaths have a more consistent impact on mitigation behaviors.

CONCLUSIONS

Pandemic-related risks can create opportunities for perceived "common ground," between the political "Right" and "Left." Risk perceptions and politics interact in their links to intended COVID-19 mitigation behavior (as measured both on Twitter and in a national survey). Our results invite a more complex interpretation of political polarization than those stemming from simplistic analyses of partisanship and ideology.

Intensive mothering and the perpetuation of gender inequality: Evidence from a mixed methods research

Intensive mothering is a cultural model of appropriate childrearing according to which mothers should unselfishly make a tremendous investment in their child. Using a mixed methodology, we examined the relevance of this ideology to understand the persistence of gender inequality. A content analysis of the most popular French mommy blogs indicates that this ideology remains commonplace, and has even incorporated contemporary concerns regarding sustainable development. Besides the expected themes of the sacredness of the child, the primary responsibility of the mother, and the use of intensive methods for all aspects of childrearing, the analysis of blog posts highlights new themes, including the sacredness of home, need for balance, and the praise of fathers. Furthermore, mommy blogs, as public online diaries involving everyday experience, prompt mothers to confess their failure to comply with intensive mothering demands and, at the same time, to reaffirm their commitment to its principles. Social influence is evidenced by the comments in response to the posts, which demonstrate polarization toward intensive mothering among the readers. A survey study further demonstrates that this ideology is positively related to a series of gender hierarchy-enhancing beliefs and attitudes. As a whole, the present research indicates that intensive mothering should be considered a system justifying ideology, while mommy blogs provide a platform for its diffusion and strengthening.

Motivating COVID-19 mitigation actions via personal norm: An extension of the norm activation model

OBJECTIVE

Given the prosocial nature of COVID-19 mitigation actions, the norm activation model (NAM) provides a theoretical framework to understand how these mitigation behaviors may be driven by activating personal norms. Aimed at delineating the relationship between awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility, two key variables in the model, the present study examined to what extent this relationship was moderated by political ideology, individual efficacy, and collective efficacy.

METHOD

A cross-sectional online survey (N = 560) was implemented with a sample that matched the demographics of the national population in the U.S.

RESULTS

The relationship between awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility was stronger among liberals and those reporting low levels of individual efficacy and collective efficacy.

CONCLUSION

Health behaviors such as COVID-19 mitigation actions can be motivated by activating individuals' sense of moral obligation, but the effectiveness of this approach depends on their political ideology and efficacy beliefs.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Campaigns can promote health behaviors by triggering the moral responsibility of the target audience through emphasizing severity of the consequences. This approach can be more effective for liberals and those that lack confidence in individual and collective abilities to avert the threat.

Outgroup threat, ideology, and favorable evaluations of the government's responses to COVID-19

Based on social psychological theories of intergroup relations, perceptions of threat from outgroups contribute to ingroup favoritism. This research examined the effects of the perceived threat from outgroups (the US) on Chinese people's favorable evaluations of their government's responses to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Study 1 conducted an experiment and found that the US' criticism of China's responses to the pandemic increased Chinese citizens' favorable evaluations of the government's performance. Study 2 was a correlational design and found that the relationship between perceptions of outgroup threats and evaluations of the government's performance was moderated by ideology and the approval of lockdown policies. These results show that outgroups are sophisticatedly employed by politicians to increase ingroup favoritism and suggest that ideological divide is an important moderator in the association between outgroup threat and the evaluation of ingroup.

Comparative Study of Chinese and American Media Reports on the COVID-19 and Expressions of Social Responsibility: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis aims to explore the dialectical relationship between discourse and ideology. Based on psycholinguistic research, this paper analyzes the Chinese and American media's news reports and comments on the COVID-19. It aims to expose the hidden psychological messages and ideologies behind the words. The corpus in this paper is mainly from the official media of China Daily and Time from December 2019 to January 2021 in China and the United States. This paper uses Wang Zhenhua's Appraisal Theory and Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar as tools to make a comparative analysis of the corpus. At the textual level, languages are classified and lexical choices are analyzed followed by the analysis of the reporter's ideology after reviewing the motivation of the reporters of two countries. On the level of social responsibility expression and discourse, the paper analyzes the news reports, which are characterized by the combination of the reporter's views on the news. In the aspect of social practice, the social and cultural factors and background of news reports are analyzed. China calls for strengthening cooperation and exchanges with other countries to jointly fight the epidemic. The Chinese government has actively shared its experience and made corresponding contributions to international economic recovery. However, the US government shirks its responsibility by claiming that the effective implementation of Chinese methods and experience in China does not mean that it can achieve corresponding results in Europe and the US. At the same time, the United States provides medical supplies to other countries. This study hopes to help awaken readers' critical thinking and increase their awareness of the anti-control of mass discourse. At the same time, it is hoped that readers can view the epidemic from a more scientific perspective, understand the facts and reject the unwarranted panic. It will also help reshape Chinese and American discourse.

Pharmaceutical Advertising and the Subtle Subversion of Patient Autonomy

Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising (DTCPA) is pervasive in the United States. Beyond its effect on consumer behavior, DTCPA changes the relationship between individuals and physicians. The author provides a brief history of pharmaceutical advertising in the United States. The author then analyzes the current commonly used marketing techniques of pharmaceutical companies and argues that pharmaceutical companies are "irrational authorities" in Erich Fromm's sense of the term since they seek to exploit persons. Using concepts from various philosophers from the Continental tradition, with a particular emphasis on the work of Michel Foucault, the author analyzes the power relations involved in DTCPA and ultimately argues that DTCPA subtly undermines the contemporary paradigm of patient autonomy while simultaneously depending upon it by treating health consumers as "dividuals," that is, as porous entities to be manipulated.

Backlash against Meat Curtailment Policies in online discourse: Populism as a missing link

Given overwhelming evidence that current levels of meat consumption jeopardize human and planetary health, there is a need for governmental action to reduce meat consumption (i.e., Meat Curtailment Policies, or MCPs). However, few such policies are actually being implemented, in part due to fear of backlash. Better understanding the ideological underpinning of backlash is thus crucial for designing strategies that can further the much needed transition towards more plant-based diets. To address this issue, this study unravels the diverse ideological notions informing backlash in discourse against MCPs. Data consists of three news articles in right-wing publications and over 2700 corresponding comments, posted on Facebook in response to policy proposals to reduce animal protein consumption in the Netherlands. Analysis of the data is based on a framework for ideological discourse analysis, which enables the identification of ideological notions through recognizing semantic and formal structures in text. The research reveals that next to the well documented notions related to neoliberalism (e.g., freedom of choice) and carnism (e.g., meat is normal), populist notions are a significant ideological basis of backlash. In addition, ideological notions related to populism, such as anti-elitism, are interlocked with carnism and neoliberalism. The analysis contributes to a better understanding of the socio-political nature of backlash against MCPs. It suggests that while notions related to carnism can explain how people justify their meat consumption, such notions are only partly relevant for explaining resistance to MCPs. Such resistance is not just an individual response, but a theme around which groups of people converge, through shared ideologies.

Idea Technology and Ideology

Although we are accustomed to thinking about technology as involving things-objects and processes-derived from scientific discoveries, science also creates a technology of ideas, ways of thinking both about the world and about human beings. And unlike "thing technology," "idea technology" can have powerful effects even when the ideas are false. This paper discusses false idea technology, or ideology, and suggests mechanisms by which it can have effects on both individuals and societies. It discusses neuroscience as the "next frontier" of ideology that may change our conceptions of human nature.

Political polarization on COVID-19 pandemic response in the United States

Despite calls for political consensus, there is growing evidence that the public response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been politicized in the US. We examined the extent to which this polarization exists among the US public across two national studies. In a representative US sample (N = 699, March 2020) we find that liberals (compared to conservatives) perceive higher risk, place less trust in politicians to handle the pandemic, are more trusting of medical experts such as the WHO, and are more critical of the government response. We replicate these results in a second, pre-registered study (N = 1000; April 2020), and find that results are similar when considering partisanship, rather than political ideology. In both studies we also find evidence that political polarization extends beyond attitudes, with liberals consistently reporting engaging in a significantly greater number of health protective behaviors (e.g., wearing face masks) than conservatives. We discuss the possible drivers of polarization on COVID-19 attitudes and behaviors, and reiterate the need for fostering bipartisan consensus to effectively address and manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social capital, population health, and the gendered statistics of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality

Scholars in the field of population health need to be on the constant lookout for the danger that their tacit ideological commitments translate into systematic biases in how they interpret their empirical results. This contribution illustrates this problematic by critically interrogating a set of concepts such as tradition, trust, social capital, community, or gender, that are routinely used in population health research even though they carry a barely acknowledged political and ideological load. Alongside this wider deconstruction of loaded concepts, I engage critically but constructively with Martin Lindström et al.'s paper “Social capital, the miniaturization of community, traditionalism and mortality: A population-based prospective cohort study in southern Sweden” to evaluate the extent to which it fits with other empirical findings in the extant literature. Taking as a point of departure the intriguing finding that social capital predicts cardiovascular and all-cause mortality only for men, but not for women, I argue that future research on the nexus of social capital, health, and mortality needs to frame gender not only as a demographic and statistical variable, but also as an ontological conundrum and as an epistemological sensibility.

A neurocognitive model of ideological thinking

Ideological behavior has traditionally been viewed as a product of social forces. Nonetheless, an emerging science suggests that ideological worldviews can also be understood in terms of neural and cognitive principles. The article proposes a neurocognitive model of ideological thinking, arguing that ideological worldviews may be manifestations of individuals' perceptual and cognitive systems. This model makes two claims. First, there are neurocognitive antecedents to ideological thinking: the brain's low-level neurocognitive dispositions influence its receptivity to ideological doctrines. Second, there are neurocognitive consequences to ideological engagement: strong exposure and adherence to ideological doctrines can shape perceptual and cognitive systems. This article details the neurocognitive model of ideological thinking and synthesizes the empirical evidence in support of its claims. The model postulates that there are bidirectional processes between the brain and the ideological environment, and so it can address the roles of situational and motivational factors in ideologically motivated action. This endeavor highlights that an interdisciplinary neurocognitive approach to ideologies can facilitate biologically informed accounts of the ideological brain and thus reveal who is most susceptible to extreme and authoritarian ideologies. By investigating the relationships between low-level perceptual processes and high-level ideological attitudes, we can develop a better grasp of our collective history as well as the mechanisms that may structure our political futures.

Why are conservatives less concerned about the coronavirus (COVID-19) than liberals? Comparing political, experiential, and partisan messaging explanations

Given research revealing conservatives are more sensitive to disease threat, it is curious that U.S. conservatives were less concerned than liberals with the COVID-19 pandemic. Across four studies that spanned almost ten months throughout the pandemic, we evaluated three potential reasons why conservatives were less concerned: (1) Motivated Political reasons (conservatives held COVID-specific political beliefs that motivated them to reduce concern), (2) Experiential reasons (conservatives were less directly affected by the outbreak than liberals), and (3) Conservative Messaging reasons (differential exposure to/trust in partisan conservative messaging). All four studies consistently showed evidence that political (and not experiential or partisan messaging) reasons more strongly mediated conservatives' lack of concern for COVID-19. Additional analyses further suggested that while they did not serve as strong mediators, experiential factors provided a boundary condition for the conservatism➔perceived threat relationship. These data on over 3000 participants are consistent with a new model of the ideology-disease outbreak interface that can be applied to both the ongoing pandemic and future disease outbreaks.

Pessimism and Optimism in the Debate on Climate Change: A Critical Analysis

In the debate on climate change commentators often express pessimistic or optimistic views. We see this mainly in the media and popular literature, but also in various academic fields. The aim of this paper is to investigate different kinds of pessimistic and optimistic views put forward in this debate and suggest explanations of the diversity of views. The paper concludes that pessimism and optimism may concern, for example, climate change as an unmitigated or poorly mitigated process, mitigation of climate change or specific measures of mitigation. These aspects are important to distinguish, because a person can be pessimist concerning climate change as an unmitigated or poorly mitigated process and optimist concerning mitigation of climate change, and be pessimist concerning one specific mitigation measure and optimist concerning another. It is suggested that the diversity of pessimistic and optimistic views is due to the uncertainty of scientific climate models and the influence of evaluative and ideological assumptions.

The "Economic Battle" Now and Then: (E)valuation Patterns of Distributive Justice in Cuban State-Socialism

This article disentangles and explores some commonly made assumptions about egalitarian state-socialist ideologies. Based on the conceptual framework of the multiprinciple approach of justice, it presents the results of an in-depth analysis of (e)valuation patterns of distributive justice in Cuban state-socialism. The analysis mainly focuses on ideational conceptions of distributive justice (just rewards), but it also accounts for distribution outcomes and resulting (in)equalities (actual rewards). The results of the comparative case study of the Cuban framework of institutions and political leaders' views in two periods of time, the early 1960s and the 2010s, point to (e)valuation patterns that are generally labelled as egalitarian, such as the allocation rules of outcome equality and (non-functional) needs. However, contrary to common assumptions about egalitarian state-socialist ideologies, the results also point to several other patterns, including equity rules as well as functional and productivist allocation rules. I argue that many of these (e)valuation patterns, in their connection to the discursive storyline of the Cuban economic battle, are indeed compatible with egalitarian state-socialist ideology.

Ideological representation of fear and hope in online newspaper reports on COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia

This study examines the ideological representation of fear and hope in online newspaper reports on COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia. The study adopts critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Van Dijk's tripartite framework of news text structure and production at microstructure level and Fairclough's insights on the interactivity between language and social cognition in the process of producing and interpreting texts. The data for this study is samples of online news on COVID-19 reported in two English Saudi website;Saudi Gazette and Arab News, six from each journal. The samples cover the period between March 4 and August 14, 2020, and are purposefully chosen to understand the language of the news reports on a specific issue over a period of time. A qualitative analysis of the data is carried out so that the perceived effect of the linguistic encoding of the news events is examined. The findings show that most of the reports on COVID-19 heavily rely on foregrounding evidentiality of statistics of new and cumulative infections as well as recoveries and deaths. Evidentiality strategy often overlaps with categorization strategy as proof of the threat of the virus which is broken down into units, each with its features and evidence. Authority strategy is used to support statistics with verifiable sources. Similarly, in representing hope to the populace, two strategies of evidentiality and authority are often used. Evidentiality strategy is employed to clear off doubts through for grounding statistics of growing recoveries, comparisons and underrepresentation of infection cases and mortalities and sometimes choice of verbs plays a role in imparting hope in the residents. Authority strategy is deployed in order to give some weight to the ideology inherent in the report.

Moralization of Covid-19 health response: Asymmetry in tolerance for human costs

We hypothesized that because Covid-19 (C19) remains an urgent and visible threat, efforts to combat its negative health consequences have become moralized. This moralization of health-based efforts may generate asymmetries in judgement, whereby harmful by-products of those efforts (i.e., instrumental harm) are perceived as more acceptable than harm resulting from non-C19 efforts, such as prioritizing the economy or non-C19 issues. We tested our predictions in two experimental studies. In Study 1, American participants evaluated the same costs (public shaming, deaths and illnesses, and police abuse of power) as more acceptable when they resulted from efforts to minimize C19's health impacts, than when they resulted from non-health C19 efforts (e.g., prioritizing economic costs) or efforts unrelated to C19 (e.g., reducing traffic deaths). In Study 2, New Zealand participants less favorably evaluated the quality of a research proposal empirically questioning continuing a C19 elimination strategy in NZ than one questioning abandoning an elimination strategy, although both proposals contained the same amount of methodology information. This finding suggests questioning elimination approaches is morally condemned, a similar response to that found when sacred values are questioned. In both studies, condition effects were mediated by lowered moral outrage in response to costs resulting from pursuing health-minded C19 efforts. Follow-up analyses revealed that both heightened personal concern over contracting C19 and liberal ideology were associated with greater asymmetries in human cost evaluation. Altogether, results suggest efforts to reduce or eliminate C19 have become moralized, generating asymmetries in evaluations of human suffering.

Pay Your Debts: Moral Dilemmas of International Debt

Should a government repay its international debts even if this imposes severe hardships on its citizens? Drawing on moral psychology, we investigate when people think a government is morally obligated to pay its debts. Participants read about a government that has to decide whether to default on its debt payments or cut vital programs. Across conditions, we varied the number of jobs at stake and whether a full or partial default is required to save them. Overall, most participants judged that a government should pay its debt even when the damage to the debtor is greater than the benefit to the lender. As the damage to the debtor became extreme, participants increasingly said the government should default, but they still judged that defaulting is morally wrong. In Experiment 2, we find in a national sample of Americans that political conservatives were more opposed to default than liberals. We discuss implications for policy, public opinion, and public welfare during economic downturns.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version of this article (10.1007/s11109-020-09675-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Political ideology and vaccination willingness: implications for policy design

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose major restrictions on individual freedom in order to stop the spread of the virus. With the successful development of a vaccine, these restrictions are likely to become obsolete-on the condition that people get vaccinated. However, parts of the population have reservations against vaccination. While this is not a recent phenomenon, it might prove a critical one in the context of current attempts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the task of designing policies suitable for attaining high levels of vaccination deserves enhanced attention. In this study, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey fielded in March 2019. They show that 39% of Europeans consider vaccines to cause the diseases which they should protect against, that 50% believe vaccines have serious side effects, that 32% think that vaccines weaken the immune system, and that 10% do not believe vaccines are tested rigorously before authorization. We find that-even when controlling for important individual-level factors-ideological extremism on both ends of the spectrum explains skepticism of vaccination. We conclude that policymakers must either politicize the issue or form broad alliances among parties and societal groups in order to increase trust in and public support for the vaccines in general and for vaccines against COVID-19 in particular, since the latter were developed in a very short time period and resulted-in particular in case of the AstraZeneca vaccine-in reservations because of the effectiveness and side effects of the new vaccines.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11077-021-09428-0.

Dispositional Fear and Political Attitudes

Previous work proposes that dispositional fear exists predominantly among political conservatives, generating the appearance that fears align strictly along party lines. This view obscures evolutionary dynamics because fear evolved to protect against myriad threats, not merely those in the political realm. We suggest prior work in this area has been biased by selection on the dependent variable, resulting from an examination of exclusively politically oriented fears that privilege conservative values. Because the adaptation regulating fear should be based upon both universal and ancestral-specific selection pressures combined with developmental and individual differences, the elicitation of it should prove variable across the ideological continuum dependent upon specific combinations of fear and value domains. In a sample of ~ 1,600 Australians assessed with a subset of the Fear Survey Schedule II, we find fears not infused with political content are differentially influential across the political spectrum. Specifically, those who are more fearful of sharp objects, graveyards, and urinating in public are more socially conservative and less supportive of gay rights. Those who are more fearful of death are more supportive of gay rights. Those who are more fearful of suffocating and swimming alone are more concerned about emissions controls and immigration, while those who are more fearful of thunderstorms are also more anti-immigration. Contrary to existing research, both liberals and conservatives are more fearful of different circumstances, and the role of dispositional fears are attitude-specific.

Towards a theory of just transition: A neo-Gramscian understanding of how to shift development pathways to zero poverty and zero carbon

As a global community, we need to understand better how a just transition can shift development paths to achieve net zero emissions and eliminate poverty. Our past development trajectories have led to high emissions, persistent inequality and a world that is fragmented across multiple contradictions. How can countries shift to development pathways that deliver zero poverty and zero carbon? In developing a theory of just transition, the article begins by reviewing a range of theoretical approaches from different traditions, building in particular on neo-Gramscian approaches. It applies and modifies core components of Gramsci's approach, building a neo-Gramscian theory of just transitions around concepts of ideology, hegemony, change agents and fundamental conditions. The theory suggests how coalitions of change agents can come together behind a just transition. The coalition needs to gain broader support, establish a new cultural hegemony in support of just transitions and be able to transform the fundamental conditions of the 21st century. The article briefly considers how this better understanding can be applied to the practice of shifting development pathways. The penultimate section reflects on limitations, including that a fuller development of a theory of just transition will require application for detailed concrete examples and a community effort. Together, we might address the multiple challenges of our present conditions to transition to development that enables human flourishing and a healthy planet.

The French public's attitudes to a future COVID-19 vaccine: The politicization of a public health issue

As Covid-19 spreads across the world, governments turn a hopeful eye towards research and development of a vaccine against this new disease. But it is one thing to make a vaccine available, and it is quite another to convince the public to take the shot, as the precedent of the 2009 H1N1 influenza illustrated. In this paper, we present the results of four online surveys conducted in April 2020 in representative samples of the French population 18 years of age and over (N = 5018). These surveys were conducted during a period when the French population was on lockdown and the daily number of deaths attributed to the virus reached its peak. We found that if a vaccine against the new coronavirus became available, almost a quarter of respondents would not use it. We also found that attitudes to this vaccine were correlated significantly with political partisanship and engagement with the political system. Attitudes towards this future vaccine did not follow the traditional mapping of political attitudes along a Left-Right axis. The rift seems to be between people who feel close to governing parties (Centre, Left and Right) on the one hand, and, on the other, people who feel close to Far-Left and Far-Right parties as well as people who do not feel close to any party. We draw on the French sociological literature on ordinary attitudes to politics to discuss our results as well as the cultural pathways via which political beliefs can affect perceptions of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Almost a quarter of the French population would not get vaccinated against COVID-19.

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Attitudes are correlated with political partisanship and engagement with politics.

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Attitudes do not follow the traditional separation between Left-wing and Right-wing.

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Refusal is associated with proximity radical parties and to abstention.

The role of religious beliefs and collective narcissism in interreligious contact on university students

The rise of exclusive puritanism movements challenges several communities to live in peaceful coexistence. This research aimed to observe the level of interreligious contact among university students. This was a threefold study. The first part was an initial inquiry to construct an interreligious contact scale. The second sought to see the inferential association between interreligious contact, belief in religious teachings (i.e. religious fundamentalism, kindly religious belief, and meta-religion endorsement), and collective narcissism. The third part was to investigate differences in those variables between students who joined student political organizations with religion-based ideology and those who did not. There were 381 respondents from various religious backgrounds (e.g. Muslim, Christian, and other) participating in this research. The result of the exploratory factor analysis indicated a unidimensionality of the interreligious contact scale. Regression analysis found that religious fundamentalism and collective narcissism made individuals less likely to exhibit interreligious contact. However, kindly religious belief and meta-religion endorsement encouraged interreligious contact. In addition, an independent sample t-test suggested that there was a difference in the inclusivism level between religion-based student organization members and non-members. Members of such organization tended to exhibit a lower level of interreligious contact, while their level of religious fundamentalism and collective narcissism were higher compared to their non-member counterparts.

Ideology and social cognition Are liberals and conservatives differentially affected by social cues about group inequality?

Research links liberal and conservative ideological orientations with variation on psychological and cognitive characteristics that are important for perceptual processes and decision-making. This study investigates whether this variation can impact the social behaviors of liberals and conservatives. A sample of subjects (n = 1,245) participated in a modified public goods game in which an intragroup inequality was introduced to observe the effect on individuals' tendency toward self-interested versus prosocial behavior. Overall, the contributions of neither liberal- nor conservative-oriented individuals were affected by conditions of a general intragroup inequality. However, in response to the knowledge that group members voted to redress the inequality, levels of contribution among liberals significantly increased in comparison to the control. This was not true for conservatives. The results provide evidence that differences in ideological orientation are associated with individual differences in social cognition.

The political construction of public health nutrition problems: a framing analysis of parliamentary debates on junk-food marketing to children in Australia

OBJECTIVE

Junk-food marketing contributes significantly to childhood obesity, which in turn imposes major health and economic burdens. Despite this, political priority for addressing junk-food marketing has been weak in many countries. Competing interests, worldviews and beliefs of stakeholders involved with the issue contribute to this political inertia. An integral group of actors for driving policy change are parliamentarians, who champion policy and enact legislation. However, how parliamentarians interpret and portray (i.e. frame) the causes and solutions of public health nutrition problems is poorly understood. The present study aimed to understand how Australian parliamentarians from different political parties frame the problem of junk-food marketing.

DESIGN

Framing analysis of transcripts from the Australian Government's Parliamentary Hansard, involving development of a theoretical framework, data collection, coding transcripts and thematic synthesis of results.

SETTINGS

Australia.

PARTICIPANTS

None.

RESULTS

Parliamentarian framing generally reflected political party ideology. Liberal parliamentarians called for minimal government regulation and greater personal responsibility, reflecting the party's core values of liberalism and neoliberalism. Greens parliamentarians framed the issue as systemic, highlighting the need for government intervention and reflecting the core party value of social justice. Labor parliamentarians used both frames at varying times.

CONCLUSIONS

Parliamentarians' framing was generally consistent with their party ideology, though subject to changes over time. This project provides insights into the role of framing and ideology in shaping public health policy responses and may inform communication strategies for nutrition advocates. Advocates might consider using frames that resonate with the ideologies of different political parties and adapting these over time.

Beliefs About Gender Predict Faking Orgasm in Heterosexual Women

The majority of women have faked an orgasm at least once in their lives. In the current study, we assessed how women's worldviews about gender relate to their faking orgasm behavior. A survey of 462 heterosexual women from the UK (M_age=38.38 years) found that those who espoused anti-feminist values-that is, those high in hostile sexism-had faked significantly more orgasms over their lifetime. In contrast, those who espoused ostensibly positive but restrictive ideas of gender relations-that is, those high in benevolent sexism-had faked significantly fewer orgasms over their lifetime. Furthermore, the more that women believed female orgasm was necessary for men's sexual gratification, the more likely they were to have faked an orgasm at least once in their lives compared to women who had never faked an orgasm. These effects were small to moderate and emerged after controlling for demographics, sexual history, ease of orgasm, and previously established psychological correlates of faking orgasm, including suspected partner infidelity and intrasexual competition.

Press Ideology as an Epistemological Connector between Framing Theory and Social Representations Theory: An Analysis of Violence and Drug Trafficking in the Mexican Press

The present paper explores the advantages of using framing theory, social representations theory and differences in ideology to analyze polarized issues in the press. Framing uncovers the structure/format of news articles and social representations explores their meanings. These two theoretical positions are connected through the concept of ideology - a set of beliefs that shape position taking regarding social issues. Using this integrated framework, we will analyze the highly polarized topic of violence and drug trafficking in two ideologically different newspapers in Sinaloa, Mexico - Noroeste (journalistic ideology) and El Debate (elite ideology) (total N = 547 articles). This will be accomplished using three steps - a descriptive analysis, application of the framing scale and submitting the articles to ALCESTE software. The results show differences in framing and social representations of violence and drug trafficking according to ideology. Each newspaper presented different news frames (journalistic - attribution of responsibility and conflict frames; elite - human-interest and morality frames). However, at the level of representations (content) there were ideological differences in the representation of violence but not of drug trafficking, suggesting a common element in these representations, beyond ideological differences. These findings contribute to (1) the clarification of the concept used and (2) towards an analytical framework of press analysis - analyzing format and content and considering differences in press ideology.

Trade and nutrition policy coherence: a framing analysis and Australian case study

OBJECTIVE

Maximising synergies and minimising conflicts (i.e. building policy coherence) between trade and nutrition policy is an important objective. One understudied driver of policy coherence is the alignment in the frames, discourses and values of actors involved in the respective sectors. In the present analysis, we aim to understand how such actors interpret (i.e. 'frame') nutrition and the implications for building trade-nutrition policy coherence.

DESIGN

We adopted a qualitative single case study design, drawing on key informant interviews with those involved in trade policy.

SETTING

We focused on the Australian trade policy sub-system, which has historically emphasised achieving market growth and export opportunities for Australian food producers.

PARTICIPANTS

Nineteen key informants involved in trade policy spanning the government, civil society, business and academic sectors.

RESULTS

Nutrition had low 'salience' in Australian trade policy for several reasons. First, it was not a domestic political priority in Australia nor among its trading partners; few advocacy groups were advocating for nutrition in trade policy. Second, a 'productivist' policy paradigm in the food and trade policy sectors strongly emphasised market growth, export opportunities and deregulation over nutrition and other social objectives. Third, few opportunities existed for health advocates to influence trade policy, largely because of limited consultation processes. Fourth, the complexity of nutrition and its inter-linkages with trade presented difficulties for developing a 'broader discourse' for engaging the public and political leaders on the topic.

CONCLUSIONS

Overcoming these 'ideational challenges' is likely to be important to building greater coherence between trade and nutrition policy going forward.

Ernst Haeckel's "ecology" in Russia of the first half of the twentieth century

The vast scientific heritage of Ernst Haeckel, evolutionist and thinker, comprises ecology as well. It is well known that it was he in 1866 introduced the term "ecology" for the science on interaction of the organisms and the environment. Haeckel built his system of the biological science (to be more precise, of the zoological science), including ecology, on the basis of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory (the theory of natural selection). Traditionally, it is supposed that Haeckel's merit in world ecology is just the introduction of its name. However, there are few works devoting to development of Russian ecology. Actually, analysis of the impact of Haeckel's ecological views on Russian biologists and development of ecology in the first half of the last century demonstrates that widely used opinion should be corrected. I hypothesise that Haeckel's influence on Russian biologists was somewhat more than commonly thought. In spite of a rather long oblivion of the term "ecology" in the Russian literature followed by confusion of ecology and some other sciences (physiology, biogeography), some biologists saw in the Haeckel's understanding of ecology the base for synthesis of ecology and the evolutionary theory. There are some specific traits of Haeckel's influence on Russian biologists. At first, some of them accepted his evolutionary approach. Secondly, they highly appreciated his definition of ecology. Biologists defended such understanding of ecology even in the period of Lysenkoism pressure. At the same time, it is evident that Haeckel's influence on development of ecology was somewhat limited.

Proximity and the principle-policy gap in white racial attitudes: Insight from views of student assignment policies in Wake County, North Carolina

We use a survey of residents of Wake County, North Carolina to test a proximity explanation for what scholars call the "principle-policy gap" in whites' views of government action on race. The derived hypothesis is confirmed when underlying broad views of race are represented by ideology. We show that whereas liberals are materially more supportive of racial diversity in student bodies than are moderates and conservatives, this difference is reduced to statistical insignificance as respondents' personal situations are more directly affected by the policy-a condition denoted by having a child of school age. Liberals with school-aged children are particularly wary of racial integration when they are asked to support the diversification of classrooms as opposed to schools. Having a school-aged child has no material conditioning effect on views of diversity when attitudes are represented by a more explicit measure of racial views.

Decentering America: the Quest for a Transnational American Studies

The planned removal of a Civil War monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the pretext for a white supremacist rally there in August 2017. It brought American fascists back into the streets, marching under the banner of a virulent nativism, of a vicious fear of being removed from the pedestal of their proper place in society. It also brought to the minds of people watching these images on TV older visual repertoires dating back to Nazi-Germany, fascist Italy, and similar racist clashes elsewhere. In such a stream of consciousness, such a chain of visual recollections, national settings-American or otherwise-are transcended. The wandering-and wondering-mind of the observer moves in a space naturally trans-national. The following essay considers the implications of such mental processes for the established forms of discourse among historians.

Social cues and ideology

Research shows that individuals with liberal and conservative ideological orientations display different value positions concerning the acceptance of social change and inequality. Research also links the expression of different values to a number of biological factors, including heredity. In light of these biological influences, I investigate whether differences in social values associated with liberal and conservative ideologies reflect alternative strategies to maximize returns from social interactions. Using an American sample of Democrats and Republicans, I test whether information about shared and unshared social values in the form of implicit social attitudes have a disproportionate effect on the willingness of Democrats and Republicans to trust an anonymous social partner. I find evidence that knowledge of shared values significantly increases levels of trust among Democrats but not Republicans. I further find that knowledge of unshared values significantly decreases trust among Republicans but not Democrats. These findings are consistent with studies indicating that differences in ideological orientation are linked to differences in cognition and decision-making.

Midwifery care based on a precautionary approach: Promoting normal births in maternity wards: The thoughts and experiences of midwives

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the thoughts and experiences of midwives in the attempt to promote normal births in Norwegian maternity wards.

METHODS

A qualitative approach was selected for data collection, and the data presented are derived from in-depth interviews. Nine midwives at three different maternity wards in Norway participated in the study. The qualitative data were analysed with the help of systematic text condensation.

RESULTS

The findings included two main themes: (1) "Individualized maternity care" (2) "A woman-centred and a biomedical perspective - a dilemma. Working in a small maternity ward increased the possibility for continuous support during labour and continuity of care throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. The midwives had a great desire to promote normal births with a minimum of interventions. Still, they adhered to an ideology based on both a woman-centred and a biomedical view of birth. Their work was often based on a precautionary approach in which problem-solving strategies were related to potential risks.

CONCLUSION

The midwives experienced challenges, as they worked in an environment where different ideologies prevailed. They utilized the positive aspects of small maternity wards, like the opportunity for continuous support during labour and continuity of care during the childbearing process. Midwives should encourage discussions about their precautionary approach and the use of technology for low-risk women, while reflecting on their own views on normal births.

Parents' Perspectives on Radicalization: A Qualitative Study

Radicalization of young people might be influenced by the way parents react towards the development of political or religious ideals. However, these reactions have hardly been explored. This study aimed to discover how parents reacted to the development of extreme ideals, and why they responded in the way that they did. To gain knowledge about the influence of parents on adolescents who developed extreme ideals, 82 in-depth interviews were held with adolescents and young adults who held extreme ideals. Interviews were also held with the parents or siblings of each adolescent and young adult. In line with parenting style theory, it was found that parents react in four possible ways: (1) by rejecting, (2) applauding, (3) ignoring, or (4) discussing the (extreme) ideals of their children. Few parents discuss ideals and values with their child, and this paper tries to show why (e.g., powerlessness, disassociation, occupation with other problems, believing it to be a phase that will pass, or that their reaction would not help). Most parents struggle to cope with radicalization and do not know how to react. Support and control are potentially important tools for parents to use to combat the development of extreme ideology.