Worldviews and the role of social values that underlie them.

In today's ideologically diverse world, it is pertinent to have a better understanding of how our beliefs of the social world shape our thinking and behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key social values that underlie particular sets of beliefs, referred to here as worldviews. Worldviews encompass beliefs that shape one's outlook on life and are, therefore, instrumental in providing meaning to one's reality and one's understanding as to how one fits in it.

The Role of Worldviews in Predicting Support for Recreational Cannabis.

We studied the role of worldviews in the endorsement of proposals for the legalisation of recreational cannabis. Drawing on literature on generalised belief structures, we developed categorical measures for five worldviews drawing on commonalities in the typologies reviewed (Orthodox, Localised, Reward, Pragmatist, and Survivor). We proceeded to study the relative influence of worldviews in support of a range of items concerned with the legalisation of recreational cannabis amongst a randomly generated sample ( = 1000) in Malta.

Making sense of the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative longitudinal study investigating the first and second wave in Italy.

The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the crucial role of people's compliance for the success of measures designed to protect public health. Within the frame of Semiotic Cultural Psycho-social Theory, we discuss how the analysis of people's ways of making sense of the crisis scenario can help to identify the resources or constraints underlying the ways the citizens evaluate and comply with the anti-covid measures. This study aimed to examine how Italian adults interpreted what was happening in the first wave of the pandemic and how the interpretation varied in the period up to the beginning of the second wave.

Introspective Projection: Prototypical Representations of Policing in the Service of Rule of Law.

Mass protests that have taken place over the past decade in various Western democracies have called into question the role of police in society, as officers have employed measures to contain rallies protesting for or against various issues. A number of these protests have resorted to violent means, resisting the police or protesting directly against their role and methods. The present study sought to investigate the prototypical representations of the police that lay citizens use to forge or desist identification with police officers.

'Social Re-presentation for…': An Action-Oriented Formula for Intergroup Relations Research.

Intergroup relations are of crucial importance in contemporary times, with concerns around social representations, social influence and collective action remaining salient. A core aspect of intergroup conflict revolves around the notion of joint projects, whereby different collectives seek to promote their own project through processes of joint intentionality. Nonetheless, we contend that intergroup relations research can tackle the notion of projects more fruitfully by studying the mutual understandings of projects of groups in conflict.

Correction: Symbolic universes between present and future of Europe. First results of the map of European societies' cultural milieu.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Symbolic universes between present and future of Europe. First results of the map of European societies' cultural milieu.

This paper reports the framework, method and main findings of an analysis of cultural milieus in 4 European countries (Estonia, Greece, Italy, and UK). The analysis is based on a questionnaire applied to a sample built through a two-step procedure of post-hoc random selection from a broader dataset based on an online survey. Responses to the questionnaire were subjected to multidimensional analysis-a combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis.

The Sociocultural Determination of Planned Behaviour.

Goochani, Ghanian, Baradaran & Azadi's (2017) study provides support for an extension of the theory of planned behaviour through inclusion of the variables of Trust and Perceived Benefits in the determination of attitudes. Considering the fact that the only other direct effect observed in this study is exercised by Subjective Norms, we argue that this new model provides support for the sociocultural determination of attitudes and, by extension, planned behaviour. We argue that understanding behavioural intentions for cultivating Bt rice requires an understanding of the social representations concerning this technology and its regulation in Iran.

Transitivity analysis: a framework for the study of social values in the context of points of view.

Since its inception, psychology has struggled with issues of conceptualization and operationalization of social-psychological phenomena. The study of social values and points of view has been prone to such difficulties, despite a predominant concern of qualitative distinctions in the variability of both of these phenomena across different individuals and social groups. And while interest in both traces a common origin in Rokeach's studies of narrow mindedness, the study of both phenomena has since proceeded apace.

Representations from the past: social relations and the devolution of social representations.

Psychological life is subject to the influence of a constructed and potentially reconstituted past, as well as to future anticipated outcomes and expectations. Human behaviour occurs along a temporal trajectory that marks the projects individuals adopt in their quests of human action. Explanations of social behaviour are limited insofar as they exclude a historical concern with human purpose.