Abstract UK drill music frequently features as a prime suspect in newsrooms and courtrooms that charge it with driving the ‘knife crime epidemic’ Britain's major conurbations. Such prejudicial assumptions about role of inciting violence are largely unfounded, but nevertheless inform criminal justice policy leads to unjust discriminatory outcomes. While rappers consciously post violent content o...

Is it possible to talk about God without either misrepresentation or failing to assert anything of significance? The article begins by reviewing how, in attempting to answer this question, traditional theories of religious language have failed to sidestep both potential pitfalls adequately. After arguing that recently developed theories of metaphor seem better able to shed light on the nature o...

Ethnographic research identifies brokering (a.k.a., “copping for others”) as an important and popular way people who use heroin acquire the drug by making purchases for their peers. Brokering is when a customer buys drugs for a fellow customer using the buyer’s money and is paid using drug the buyer purchases. This distributes heroin costs. Heroin dealers obviously manipulate price and/or drug ...

Naval cohorts rely heavily on personnel to ensure the efficient running of naval organisations. As such, the wellbeing of personnel is essential. In an occupational setting, naval service personnel experience a variety of physiological and psychological stressors. Most naval services arrange annual physical fitness and body composition tests to ensure the physical readiness of personnel. Howeve...

JOURNAL OF PACIFIC RIM PSYCHOLOGY Volume 4, Issue 1 pp. 53–60 Address for correspondence: Alicia Copping, School of Psychology, Locked Bag 1342, UTAS, Newnham TAS 7250, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] A 16 year old girl is walking home from school. Suddenly she is attacked by a group of four older men. The men drag her into a nearby house where she is systematically raped and assaulted....

Trust is a critical aspect of social interaction. One might predict that individuals trust religious out-groups less than religious in-groups, and that costly signals performed by members of religious in-groups increase trust while costly signals performed by members of religious out-groups decrease trust. We examined how Christian participants perceived the trustworthiness of Muslim and Christ...

The paper analyzes the relation between religious beliefs, religious participation and social cooperation. In particular, we focus on religions that instill beliefs about the connection between rewards and punishments and social behaviour. We show how religious organizations arise endogenously, analyze their e¤ect on social interactions in society and identify a "spiritual" as well as a "materi...

Past research argues that religious commitments shape individuals’ prosocial sentiments, including their generosity and solidarity. But what drives the prosociality of less religious people? Three studies tested the hypothesis that, with fewer religious expectations of prosociality, less religious individuals’ levels of compassion will play a larger role in their prosocial tendencies. In Study ...

Researchers have found that religious affiliation, religious attendance, religious beliefs, and prayer are associated with teen sexual attitudes and behavior.(Wallace & Williams, 1997; Whitehead, Wilcox, & Rostosky, 2001) Holding strong religious beliefs and praying are linked to reduced sexual activity among adolescents (Meier, 2003; Resnick et al., 1997) and teens (girls in particular) from m...