What Actually Matters? Understanding Attitudes toward Immigration in Switzerland

On 9 February 2014, the Swiss people accepted the popular initiative “against mass immigration” launched by the national‐conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP). This voting outcome has triggered wide‐ranging debates about both the policy on immigrants as well as the future of Switzerland within the European context. Against this background, we evaluate attitudes toward immigration in Switzerland. Using hitherto unexplored survey data of MOSAiCH, our empirical analyses show that already in the year 2013, before the debate about the initiative on mass immigration was in full swing, roughly 53 percent of the 1011 interviewed Swiss citizens stated that immigration should be reduced. Moreover, our estimations indicate that the threats and fears induced by immigration and the will to maintain sovereignty and autonomy are particularly relevant for attitudes toward immigration. By contrast, education and national or personal economic conditions are only weakly related to the immigration issue.     

Implicit attitudes toward violence and their relation to psychopathy,aggression, and socially adaptive behaviors in forensic psychiatric inpatients

In order to investigate the relation between implicit attitudes toward violence and different aspects of violent and social behavior in Dutch forensic psychiatric inpatients, an implicit association test was related to measures of psychopathy, aggression, and socially adaptive behaviors. Results indicated that all patients had negative implicit attitudes toward violence. Although implicit attitudes toward violence were unrelated to several self-report measures of aggression, there was a significant positive relation between these attitudes and the antisocial facet of psychopathy. Furthermore, it was found that implicit attitudes toward violence were significantly negatively associated with coping behaviors and the level of moral awareness, indicating that patients with more negative implicit attitudes toward violence more often reported these behaviors, which can be assumed to inhibit aggression. As the present study was only correlational in nature, our findings need to be further explored in prospective research.     

Gender effects in attitudes about family violence

We present results of perceptions of family violence from 176 telephone interviews conducted in a Standard Metropolitan Area in Northwest Arkansas. Four research questions are examined: (1) How do men and women differ in their perceptions about the seriousness and causes of family violence? (2) Do men and women differ in their acceptance of specific acts of interpersonal violence and does the gender of the aggressor and victim affect gender perceptions? (3) Do men and women differ in their views about the effectiveness of different intervention agencies? (4) Do men and women differ in their willingness to report acts of child abuse and does the gender of the parent and child affect the likelihood of reporting? Results indicate that females consider the problem as more serious and view public responses to family violence as more effective. Both male and females are more tolerant of acts of aggression and violence if directed by a woman toward a man. Females are more likely to report child abuse but there are significant interactions between the respondent's gender and the gender of the parent and child.     

Regional International Organizations and Individual Immigration Attitudes: Results from Finite Mixture Models

When are individuals more likely to support immigration? We suggest here that regional international organizations (IOs; for example, the European Union) publicly release reports about the scale and benefits of immigration to member states in the region in which these IOs operate. We argue that unlike individuals who are uninformed about immigration, informed individuals who have more knowledge of the main regional IO in which their country participates will be more likely to employ immigration reports released by their regional IO to construct their immigration attitudes. They will also perceive that these reports are credible. The credibility of these reports helps individuals with more knowledge about their region’s main IO to view immigrants favorably, which translates to support for immigration. We test our prediction by developing a finite mixture model that statistically accounts for the econometric challenges that emerge when uninformed individuals “save face” by disproportionately opting for the middle “status quo” category in ordinal survey response variables of immigration support. Results from the finite mixture model corroborate our prediction and are more reliable than estimates from a standard ordered probit model.     

Gender attitudes and the police in Bosnia and Herzegovina: male officers’ attitudes regarding their female counterparts

Utilizing survey data collected from 127 male Bosnian police officers, this study examines the impact attitudes toward women, individual characteristics, and work experiences have on officers’ perceptions of their female colleagues. It is hypothesized that officers who hold more traditional, patriarchal attitudes toward women will view females as incapable of effectively carrying out police work, regardless of their own work experiences, or demographic characteristics. Results suggest that a majority of Bosnian policemen believe that women are equally as effective as men in all aspects of policing, however, many still cling to stereotypical views of policing and continue to view female officers negatively.     

Crime victims and attitudes towards the police: the Israeli case

Crime victims are a critical component of the criminal justice system. Their evaluations of the police have been studied through victimization and public attitude surveys mainly in the US and the UK. This study, which utilizes data from a large scale community survey conducted in Israel in 2008, finds that victims’ attitudes towards the police are significantly more negative than those of non-victims regarding police treatment, performance, and trust in the police. This study is the first to compare the views of victims and non-victims in Israel, while focusing on a wider array of attitudes than previously examined.     

What to do about stalking: a preliminary study of how stalking victims responded to stalking and their perceptions of the effectiveness of these actions☆

While stalking researchers have cataloged various strategies used by victims to deal with stalking, little research has examined whether these strategies have proven effective. Using data collected from undergraduates at a Midwestern university, we examined the effects of informal responses for victims of both violent and nonviolent stalking who responded to the stalker on their own and victims who enlisted the help of others. Findings indicated that victims who enlisted help from family and friends in their informal responses to the stalker were more successful in attenuating the effects of both violent and nonviolent stalking. Victims of stalking generally were more likely than nonvictims to feel that formal coping strategies were ineffective.     

Drug Views

Abstract

Substance abuse is a significant social problem and political issue. Students at a Midwestern university were surveyed on their drug views. The findings suggest that race is a statistically significant factor on students' views toward drugs. White students were more likely than non-Whites to view drugs as a pressing social issue, to consider drug use as a character weakness, and to support a punitive response to drug use. In contrast, non-Whites were more likely than Whites to view drug abuse as an illness, to support treatment as a response, to be tolerant of marijuana use, and to support legalization of marijuana. Both groups of students considered alcohol a dangerous drug. Differences associated with race remained statistically significant in multivariate analysis after controlling for age, academic standing, political affiliation, and religiosity.     

Punishment justifications in rape cases: a community study

Norway is one of the countries with the most progressive criminal justice systems in the Western world. Traditionally, the Norwegian criminal justice system has been mainly based on treatment and deterrence perspectives. While it is believed that criminal justice practices should be in accordance with public attitudes, few studies in Scandinavia have investigated public attitudes towards criminal justice sanctions in a methodologically sound manner. The current study is the first to investigate the attitudes of the Norwegian public towards punishment of rapists. In a Norwegian community sample (N = 475) from 2005, participants found the typical sentencing severity of a convicted rapist too lenient. The participants did report that as a global sentencing orientation, they preferred incapacitation. When presented with a specific rape case, their sentencing judgements were oriented towards both incapacitation and retribution, but their global orientation were not related to their specific judgements. Aggravating circumstances (e.g. violence was used) were found to influence the participants’ judgements more than when no aggravating circumstances were present (e.g. no violence was used). Few gender or educational differences were found, which indicates that these attitudes towards punishment of rapists are quite consistent across demographical groups.     

National Identity as a Means of Reducing Ethnic Negativism

This article discusses how national identity in Russia is understood by the public and among experts who study ethnic issues. The author separates the notion of national identity into categorical identity and associative identity (i.e., the consolidating type of identity which is based on a strong feeling of connection with other citizens). The latter type of identity is present only among a third of people who identify themselves as Russian. The author further analyses the connection of this type of identity with inter-ethnic negativism. She finds that national identity does not remove bias toward abstract “others.” However, it affects direct inter-ethnic communication in the labor and family spheres. The positive impact of national identity on inter-ethnic attitudes is more apparent in the Astrakhan region, which has longer experience of inter-ethnic communication. It is argued that one obstacle to national identity having a positive impact on inter-ethnic attitudes is the lack of a clear and consistent understanding of national identity among education experts, social scientists, and journalists. The study utilizes data from Wave 24 of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology (“The dynamics of social transformation of modern Russia in the socioeconomic, political, sociocultural, and ethno-confessional contexts,” Wave 4) and several separate regional polls conducted by the Department of Ethno-sociology of the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Science between 2014 and 2016.