Loneliness is known to be a major health concern globally. However, although there is a growing body of research on loneliness in adults, it is less studied in children. Further, very few studies have considered the long-term impact of experiences of being alone in early life on adults. This study explored the construct of aloneness in children using a retrospective design. It asked 70 adults to describe their high and low point stories from childhood. Analysis of the stories using reflective thematic analysis identified four aloneness constructs: emotional loneliness, social loneliness, quasi-existential loneliness and solitude. Risk and protective factors and related constructs for loneliness in childhood were also identified: home difficulties, life events, peer difficulties and emotional turmoil; and natural environment, independence, special occasions and stability. The study provides a framework for a holistic construct of aloneness in childhood, and highlights how developing a strong sense of identity and a positive attitude towards aloneness in early years may help to develop social and policy interventions to boost wellbeing across the lifespan.

Four studies tested the hypothesis that psychological essentialism underlies political conservatism. Study 1 (n = 263) finds correlational evidence that essentialist thinking about the U.S. is correlated with support for three conservative ideologies (RWA, SDO, nationalism) and conservative policies regarding religion, taxes, the environment and immigration. Experiments show that prompting participants to think about the essence of the U.S. increases support for RWA and nationalism, but not SDO. Study 2 (n = 164) compares an essential to a non-essential framing of the U.S., while Study 3 (n = 150) compares essential framings of the U.S. to another concept (music). Parallel mediation analyses show that support for RWA and nationalism mediates the relationship between essentialism and support for conservative policy positions. Study 4 (n = 174) directly replicates Study 2 and goes further to test mediators, showing that perceptions of intergroup threat mediate the effect of an essential U.S. framing on RWA, while national identification mediates the effect on nationalism. We discuss how the different ways liberals and conservative Americans conceive their nation impacts political polarization. Data and materials are publicly available at (https://osf.io/srvxk/?view_only=3222ba5c750d4362b68b25ea80195d67)

Given the increase of political polarization in social networks, particularly during electoral campaigns, this study sought to determine the levels of affective polarization in political communication through the temporal perspective, delegitimizing beliefs, and intergroup emotions. Two studies were carried out: the first in the context of the elections in Andalusia (Spain) and the second during the Colombian presidential campaign. Both studies took the tweets of candidates and Twitter users who commented on them. From linguistic analysis, an index was developed to measure affective polarization in linguistic pieces, such as tweets. It was found that in contexts without political violence, it is common to implement communicative strategies with high indicators of ingroup bias, which implies a lower polarization, but increases with positive emotions and a focus on the future. Whereas, in contexts of political violence, the strategy focused on discrimination of the outgroup and its delegitimization, in which positive emotions decreased polarization, while the focus on the past increased it. It was concluded that affective polarization could be an indicator the disposition to reconciliation processes in contexts of violence, and a map of emotions associated with polarization is provided.

This study examines various attitudes to wealth inequality in Czechia and the broader CEE region and provides valuable insights into global research on inequality perceptions. By focusing on this, to date, underexplored region, our research contributes to the current understanding of wealth inequality at the global scale. The findings revealed remarkable similarities between Czech and US respondents in terms of their perceptions and preferences. On average, participants estimated that the top 20% of the population in the Czech Republic holds approximately 48% of total wealth, while expressing a preference for a lower wealth share of around 34% in the ideal scenario. These results are in alignment with previous research that highlighted a prevalent lack of awareness of actual levels of wealth inequality combined with a consistent preference for the reduction of inequality levels. By elucidating these patterns, this study contributes to the growing body of literature in the field.

Perception of flood hazard risk and people's trust in the government have vital influences on risk communication. We conducted three studies to examine the relation and mechanism of trust and flood hazard risk perception. In Study 1, we found that people's risk perception and government trust were significantly negatively correlated. In Studies 2 and 3, using correlational and experimental methods, we found that the higher the public's trust in the government, the more they used heuristics to process risk information, and their risk perception was lower than the group with low trust in the government. Our results suggest that government trust can influence risk perception via heuristics.

We examined how locally situated and transnationally circulated meanings of feminism interact forming implicit cultural meanings, and how these meanings about feminism appear in women’s accounts of their own work and identifications. Using twenty-four oral histories, we identified four implicit cultural meanings about feminism: (1) “Mainstream” feminism is/as white and middle-class; (2) Feminists are lesbians; (3) Feminism is/as hostile to men; and (4) Feminism is/as a “western” ideology. In addition, we identified three strategies activists used to respond to these meanings: (1) distancing themselves from the word “feminist/feminism”; (2) explicitly embracing the term and clarifying its meaning; and (3) shifting from an individual to a structural level of analysis. Examining these discourses in a multinational sample with women of various racial-ethnic and indigenous identities, we found that implicit cultural meanings often identified in the U.S. or as western interact with locally found meanings affecting activists in the Majority World . Activists’ use of these implicit cultural meanings complicated prevalent, but often simplistic, narratives about feminists, feminism, and identity.

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people experience higher levels of economic insecurity and poverty compared to non-SGM people. Social safety net programs may reduce this disparity, but the uptake of these programs among SGM adults has rarely been assessed. We conducted a secondary data analysis of the 2018-2020 Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey to compare differences in material hardship and social safety net program utilization between SGM and non-SGM adults in the United States. SGM participants were more likely to report food insecurity, utilities hardship, medical hardship, and multiple material hardships. SGM adults had higher odds compared to non-SGM adults of using SNAP, income- or disability-based insurance, SSI or SSDI, and housing assistance. There were no differences in use of WIC, reduced-price/free school lunch benefits, or charitable food. Future studies are needed to evaluate the efficacy of the social safety net programs for reducing material hardship.

Sexual violence is a world-wide health problem that has begun to escalate in online and virtual spaces. One form of technology-facilitated sexual violence that has escalated in recent years is image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), or the nonconsensual creation, distribution, and/or threat of distribution of nude or sexual images. Using a trauma-informed and victim-centered framework, we asked victim-survivors for structural solutions to IBSA based on their own experiences. Using thematic analysis on 36 semi-structured interviews with adult U.S. victim-survivors of IBSA, we found that victim-survivors proposed structural solutions to IBSA along 5 general dimensions: legal (creating/strengthening laws, enforcing laws, facilitating legal navigation), corporate (corporate responsibility/activism and solutions for employers), educational (IBSA education, outreach and advocacy, and developing communities of support), technological (more platform accountability, improved procedures for uploading images, better avenues for reporting and removing images, and enhanced platform policies), and cultural. Many solutions built on existing structures (e.g., sexual education in schools) and frameworks (e.g., creating support groups like those for people in recovery from alcohol abuse), enabling educational professionals, policy makers, victim-support service providers, and corporations to readily implement them.

Objective: Institutions of higher education (IHE) have faced increasing pressure to comply with federal regulations and reform their response to campus sexual assault (CSA). This study explores whether decoupling, or organizational resistance to change, is associated with the number and timing of CSA reforms adopted. Participants: A web-based survey of IHE employees familiar with sexual assault policy implementation on their campus asked about types of reforms, timing, decoupling, and campus characteristics. Method: Correlations and t-tests were run to examine the types of reforms across time periods, and regression assessed the degree to which decoupling was associated with the number and timing of reforms. Results: Higher decoupling was associated with fewer reforms in the early period and more in the late period, though not with the overall number of reforms adopted. Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of understanding factors that influence change on campuses.

INTRODUCTION: Despite legal efforts to reduce societal barriers, people with disabilities still face anti-disability bias, stereotyping, and stigma. According to the social movement hypothesis, people’s participation in and identification with activist movements may reduce bias towards social outgroups. Alternatively, people’s intergroup attitudes and bias may influence their participation in activist activities. METHODS: This study used structural equation modeling to investigate whether reduced bias towards people with disabilities is associated with critical activism and/or personal, familial, or work experience with disability. Undergraduates (N = 497) completed an online survey including measures of anti-disability bias, critical activist orientation, experience with disability, and demographic characteristics. RESULTS: The relation between having a critical activist orientation and lower anti-disability bias was bidirectional, suggesting reciprocal influences between individual-level attitudes and participation in social movements. Aligning with intergroup contact theory, personal and familial experience with disability correlated with reduced anti-disability bias, and familial and work experience with having a critical activist orientation. Male gender correlated with increased anti-disability bias, and male gender, White race, and higher social class with lower endorsements of a critical activist orientation. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that disability experience and social status influence critical activist identity, which predicts lower bias.

In the study of sentencing disparities, class related hypotheses have received considerably less attention than explanations based on offenders’ ethnicity. This is unfortunate since the two mechanisms are likely interrelated, at the very least as a result of their overlap in the population, with ethnic minorities being generally more deprived than the White majority. In this registered report we propose exploring the mediating and moderating effects between offenders’ area deprivation and their ethnic background using a novel administrative dataset capturing all offences processed through the England and Wales Crown Court. Specifically, we seek to test two key hypotheses: i) the reported ethnic disparities in sentencing are mediated and explained away by area deprivation; and ii) ethnic disparities are moderated by area deprivation, with ethnic disparities being narrower in the more deprived areas. Results from this empirical analysis will shed new light on the underlying causes of sentencing disparities, but crucially - if deprivation is shown to play a major role in the generation of ethnic disparities - they will also help inform the adequate policy responses to redress this problem.

Little is known about longitudinal health risks and justice involvement among juvenile justice system (JJS) populations. This study used a sample of n = 388 males involved in the JJS to examined longitudinal associations of a latent health risk factor, comprised of depression, marijuana use, and sexually transmitted infections, with post-JJS placement. Results indicate the health risk factor was relatively stable over three time points of JJS entry and associated with present and future JJS placement. Youths who were Hispanic, older, or living with a family member struggling with alcohol use had higher health risk. These findings underscore the need for JJS services that address health risks among persistent juvenile offenders, with consideration of cultural and family dynamics.