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How do employees become politically motivated? In this study, we examine how ethnic minority employees interpret political experiences at work and form motivations to act politically (or not) by uncovering attribution-based political scripts. We propose that cognitive scripts entail learning about the political landscape at work and motivational pathways (personal responses to the political landscape). Adopting a mixed methods approach, we interviewed 40 ethnic minority employees and extracted 810 spontaneous causal attributions about beneficial or detrimental career-related political experiences. Using latent class analysis, we identified how combinations of these attributions formed six political scripts. The content of these scripts revealed that most political experiences motivated participants to opt out of the political arena, unless political activity was legitimized or enabled by senior gatekeepers. Our findings advance scholarship on political cognition, political will, and racialized politics at work by highlighting how the wider organizational political environment shapes employees' political motivation. We also demonstrate how politics can be perceived as racialized and offer practical suggestions for ways organizations can make workplace politics more racially inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how one special school for pupils with moderate‐learning difficulties reflects themes in the literature on pupil motivation. It aims to highlight good practice and is based on reflections from prolonged working with the school as an advisory teacher, illustrated with teacher, pupil and parent comments from Y6 Education Health Care Plans and Y7 annual review documents (n = 23) and from OFSTED reports. It beings by exploring the origins and influences on pupil motivation, identifying the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and examining motivational traits and attributions within individuals. It then discusses the motivational influences of the social and learning contexts of the school: organisation, curriculum and pedagogy, and goals and rewards. Throughout, school‐specific observations are related to and discussed alongside themes in the literature. Motivation is commonly defined in quantitative terms that describe the intensity, direction and duration of behaviour and effort. It is the qualitative aspects of how motivation is aroused and maintained that are germane to this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive behavioural support (PBS) is a non-aversive approach to preventing and managing challenging behaviours. Seventy-nine qualified and unqualified nursing, psychology and occupational therapy staff were trained in using PBS. To measure the effectiveness of the training, confidence in managing challenging behaviour and attributions for causality, control and stability were measured before and after the training. To measure confidence, an adapted version of the Confidence in Coping with Patient Aggression Instrument was used. Attributions were measured using the Challenging Behaviour Attributions Scale and the Causal Dimension Scale II. There was a significant increase in confidence after training. In addition, there were significant changes in attributions relating to causality and stability of challenging behaviour, particularly for qualified staff. The results suggest that confidence and attributions are affected positively by training in PBS within a medium secure forensic mental health setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background Bullying has usefully been described as demonstrations of the norms of young people's social groups, outlawing and punishing those who do not conform. The way a person appraises bullying strongly influences the coping process, how the person reacts emotionally and bystander behaviour. A social-psychological perspective was used to study young people's representations of group-based and individual-based bullying. Purpose The study explores the usefulness of making a distinction not investigated in the bullying literature: that between abuse based on individual characteristics and abuse in terms of group membership, such as one's race or sex as a whole. Much of the existing bullying literature contains an implicit value judgement that group-based bullying is worse, and therefore more difficult to cope with, because it maligns not only the individual, but also the individual's entire reference group. The aim of this study is to understand young people's evaluations of the severity of the two distinguishable bases for being bullied. Sample A total of 471 students from eight mixed-sex British state secondary schools, divided into 96 groups of five students, aged 11-16 from Years 7, 9 and 11; 54% girls, 46% boys. Four of the schools were in east London, an area of high ethnic mix and low socio-economic status (SES), and four from Cambridgeshire, an area of low ethnic mix and high SES. Design and methods A group-interview methodology was used to elicit young people's appraisals of the two different bases for being bullied. Using a convenience sampling strategy, groups of approximately five students were interviewed between November 2003 and May 2004. Each group generated and ranked pejorative names as more or less severe and were then asked to justify their evaluations. Flyvbjerg's phronetic approach was adopted for data analysis, locating the method between the numerical orientation of quantitative content analysis (involving simple descriptive counts of codes) and the interpretive orientation of grounded theory. Results Responses only partially support the assumption in the literature; students mentioned many other dimensions upon which evaluations of the severity of bullying are conditional, ranging from social conventions, intention, frequency and truth, to the type of target and the nature of the stigma. Being bullied for group membership entails cognitive sense-making that is identical to that entailed in individual-based bullying on some dimensions, and different on others. Results are interpreted in terms of the general heightened awareness of bullying and racism that permeates schools. Conclusions The literature's assertions that group-based bullying is more insidious, more damaging and more capable of evoking anger and feelings of injustice than individual-based bullying are not grounded in substantial evidence. The present study of young people's evaluations of group-based bullying compared directly with individual-based bullying found that such assertions represent only a fraction of young people's thinking about school bullying. This research contributes to knowledge about the complex processes through which adolescents are both susceptible to, and protected from, bullying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The present paper describes the findings of a pilot study funded by the NHS Executive Primary and Community Care Research Initiative Small Projects Scheme that investigated the knowledge and attributions of dementia held by care staff who work with older adults with learning disability. Meetings took place with 21 members of care staff identified as keyworkers to older adults with learning disability living in residential houses provided by Solihull Healthcare NHS Trust, Solihull, UK. The results suggest that staff have knowledge of ageing at a similar level to that of college students. Forgetfulness was the sign that they would most expect to see if they thought someone was suffering from dementia. When a change in behaviour was attributed to dementia, it was most likely to be viewed as ‘stable, uncontrollable’ with staff feeling pessimistic about being able to change the behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public support for numerous obesity policies is low, which is one barrier to their implementation. One reason for this low support is the tendency to ascribe obesity to failings of willpower as opposed to the environment. Correlational evidence supports this position. However, the experimental evidence is mixed. In two experimental studies, participants were randomised to receive no message, messages about the environment's influence on obesity (Study 1 & 2), or messages about the environment's influence on human behaviour (Study 1). We investigated whether communicating these messages changed support for obesity policies and beliefs about the causes of obesity. Participants were recruited from nationally representative samples in Great Britain (Study 1 & 2) and the USA (Study 2) (total n = 4391). Study 2 was designed to replicate existing research. Neither study found evidence that communicating the messages increased support for obesity policies or strengthened beliefs about the environment's role in obesity. Study 2, therefore, did not replicate two earlier experimental studies. Instead, the studies reported here suggest that people's beliefs about the causes of obesity are resistant to change in response to evidence and are, therefore, not a promising avenue to increase support for obesity policies.