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Swearing in public discourse represents a contentious rhetorical feature of populist leaders' transgressive politics. This paper argues that, beyond constituting merely "offensive" speech, swearing generatively accomplishes a host of discursive functions which contribute to the fortification of a populist regime. Taking populist President Duterte of the Philippines as a case in point, we utilize a critical text analytics approach to examine his use of profane language across a corpus of 746 of his public speeches. We find that Duterte discursively harnesses swear words to: (a) affirm vernacular identities with hostile humor, (b) claim outsider virtues against corrupt institutions, and (c) marshal insider force as the nation's sovereign leader. Swearing thus represents a rich discursive resource for populist leaders to navigate their contradictory positions as insiders and outsiders to political power, toward both public endearment and coercion of the nation's people. Our findings suggest the importance of critically examining language in relation to collective-level phenomena like populism and the utility of mixed methods approaches for enriching global psychologies of politics and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accelerated datafication of social life has led to increased interest in advancing the use of big data in psychology. However, prevailing methodological preoccupations in big data psychology elide foundational issues which amplify the problems of modernity/coloniality, including the suppression of marginalized psychologies and the widened gap between researchers and their subjects. We propose decolonial foundations for utilizing big data in psychological scholarship. We move beyond prevailing technical concerns with data processing, to engage situated practices of knowledge production. The ontological object of computing shifts from a universal psychology of numerous individuals, to a localized psychology of collectives. Epistemological priorities shift from context‐free definition and control, to prioritizing temporal responsiveness and linguistic fidelity to emergent psychological phenomena. Ethical guidelines extend beyond issues of personal privacy, and address sociopolitical concerns in fragile democracies. Finally, reflexivities from the margins account for unequal systems that situate psychologists, big data, and the phenomena they study within the plurality of Global Souths. Two Philippine case studies operationalize these principles through localized data collection practices, participatory algorithmic design, interrogation of bias, and wrestling with state encroachments. We conclude with decolonial directions for advancing equitable practices of knowledge production within the computational and psychological sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined social psychological aspects of nonviolent democratic transitions in Southeast Asia at the close of the 20th century. Researchers interviewed prodemocracy activists who participated in the Philippines' People's Power Revolution, Cambodia's Dhammayietra (Buddhist Walk for Peace), and East Timor's peace and liberation movement. Sets of open-ended vernacular questions were custom-built to fit each country's unique transition to democracy. In addition, the author used as a data source her personal experiences in the Philippines as a leader of street politics during People's Power. Findings show similar social psychological factors across all three politically-transformative episodes in Southeast Asia. Shared characteristics include a history of systemic violence, loosening up of the authoritarian regime, violence toward the prodemocracy activists, spiritual orientations of social commitments, networking-mobilizing skills used to confront an authoritarian state, building a social infrastructure to produce massive force, and conscientizing for active nonviolence.

Causal mapping was used to compare poverty activists and non-activists from Canada and the Philippines (N = 80) in terms of their beliefs about the causes of poverty in developing nations. The causal maps varied as a function of both activist status and country of residence. Activists included more external societal causes in their maps than non-activists, whereas non-activists included more individualistic and internal societal causes. In terms of map structure, Filipino activists included significantly more causal links in their maps than members of the other three groups. A cluster analysis on distance ratios, an index of dissimilarity among the maps, produced three clusters dominated by Filipino non-activists, Canadian non-activists, and Filipino activists, respectively, and a fourth cluster that included a heterogeneous mix of respondents from all four groups. Implications for public education, the effective coordination of antipoverty interventions, and methodological issues related to causal mapping are discussed. Keywords: mental models; poverty attributions; causal mapping; poverty activism

This research examined variations in preferred personality attributes of conflict resolvers. Using a semantic differential scale, youth from Malaysia, Japan, China, Philippines, Australia, Germany, and the United States described an effective conflict resolver. ANOVA procedures tested whether culture, country's level of economic development, or gender produced significant variations on conflict resolver preferences. Results show that conflict resolvers can be described along a continuum that has a compassionate peacemaker on one side and a dominating peacemaker on the other. Cultural differences produced marginal significance. The stronger effects were results of variations in power positions. A compassionate peacemaker was preferred by respondents from developing societies, rather than by those from the wealthier countries, and by women more than men.