Women as a group may be more vulnerable to the impact of hazards, but at an individual level, they also have capacity to adapt to changing circumstances in ways that contribute to their own resilience. This paper provides examples of the ways in which some women adapt to a recurrent natural hazard to which they are exposed, in turn, providing insights on adaptive capacity at a personal level.

In late 2013, the Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP) signed an agreement with the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology (JPRP) to annually produce one themed issue in accordance with both organisations’ missions, for a period of 5 years. For AASP, the annual publication of a themed issue on ‘The Social Psychology of Social Change: Science and Practice in Asia’ was the end result of 2 years of member consultation, undertaken by President-Elect James Liu from 2012 to 2013. This resulted in a Mission Statement, and a directive from members to develop a second publications outlet with an SSCI impact factor, but more focused on applied research, to complement AASP's eponymous flagship journal the Asian Journal of Social Psychology (which is more basic in its research orientation).

Dr Crabbe presents a broad overview of the sociohistory of Hawaii following western contact and its colonisation by the United States (US). He describes the constant political, societal, and psychological struggles of Kānaka Maoli (native Hawaiians) against the never-ending tides of foreign influences to the shores of Hawaii. Within his sociohistorical overview, three significant issues for Kānaka Maoli are emphasised. One issue is that of 'Āina land. (The word 'Āina is capitalised throughout because, in the Native Hawaiian worldview, 'Āina is a living entity who gives and sustains life; it is an ancestor of the Hawaiian people, and it is important to the existence of Kānaka Maoli.) The second issue has to do with Kānaka Maoli is identity, which has been impacted by various foreign contacts and US colonisation that has negatively impacted traditional Hawaiian practices, customs, beliefs, language, and society. The constant struggle of Kānaka Maoli in regaining sovereignty, or self-determination, is a third issue of significance in Dr Crabbe's article. This article will briefly discuss the interplay among, and significance of, these three issues: 'Āina, Kānaka Maoli, and sovereignty, focusing on the importance and relevance of the first for the second and third.

Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers continues to polarise public debate. The present study sought to investigate the factors that may influence an individual’s endorsement of deterrence-based government policies. Using the integrated threat theory of prejudice, the present study examined the role of perceived threat in shaping Australian voters’ political attitudes toward asylum seekers. A total of 255 Australian citizens completed an online questionnaire that assessed their support for aspects of government policy and their perceptions of asylum seekers as a threat. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to examine the combined and unique influences of perceived threat and sociodemographic factors on overall and individual government policy endorsement. Results indicated that various types of threat (realistic, symbolic, and negative stereotypes) were significant predictors of policy support. Practical implications regarding the development of anti-discriminatory strategies and directions for future research are discussed.

This study aimed to explore the personal effect of the global crisis on both New Zealanders and migrants, as well as their intentions and reasons to stay or migrate to another country. Using a mixed method design, we investigated the major concerns of workers in the Wellington region during 2009 and 2010. The main concerns were: salary, workload, job security, disposable income, work budget and job opportunity. New Zealand-born participants were as likely as migrants to express interest in leaving due to the state of the economy. However, overseas-born participants were more likely than New Zealand-born participants to say they would leave if they lost their job.

This review highlights the strengths of Geoffrey Saxe's latest book on cultural development of mathematical ideas. His research was undertaken in a remote area of Papua New Guinea. This book is important for it brings together Saxe's critical thinking on genetic development within the field of cognitive psychology as it relates to mathematics. This is an important contribution to ethnomathematics.

In order to check whether (un)civilised behaviour can be a valid indigenous intergroup comparison dimension for Chinese people, three studies were conducted based on stereotypic explanatory bias (SEB). Study 1 examined the media representation of Chinese and Western (un)civilised behaviours, and the SEB results suggested ingroup derogation of Chinese people regarding civilised behaviour. Study 2 aimed to use a more empirical approach to further analyse Chinese intergroup bias for civilised behaviour at both implicit and explicit levels. Chinese participants’ SEB results indicated ingroup derogation and outgroup favouritism were at the implicit level; however, ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation were at the explicit level. Study 3 was designed to examine how stereotypes that were verified in Study 2 would be changed by manipulating the presentation of extreme, stereotype-relevant information in the form of an internet blog. These findings suggest that (un)civilised behaviour can be a valid indigenous intergroup comparison dimension for Chinese people who perceive themselves as a disadvantaged group compared to Westerners on this dimension. Finally, theoretical contribution and practical implications for social change are discussed.

This special thematic section is the first in a series of special sections that the Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP) is developing for the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology. Over the last four years, the AASP has guest edited one special issue each year on applied social psychology research in the journal in an attempt to encourage Asian social psychologists to engage in research that address real world problems in Asian societies. The special issues have featured a variety of research approaches (action research, program development, experiments, and so on) on a range of important social concerns (see Bernardo & Liu, 2018, for a retrospective view of these special issues). As part of its continuing cooperative relationship with the journal, every year for the next five years, the AASP will guest edit smaller special thematic issues, each with a more well-defined focus, in the hope of making stronger incremental contributions to research and theory on important areas of social psychology.

Previous research has found that musicians’ pitch judgments, unlike non-musicians’, are influenced by syllable names. Although non-musicians fail to identify absolute pitches, they acknowledge the direction of pitch change. The present experiment investigated whether non-musicians’ judgments of pitch change can be influenced by the direction of syllable name change. Moreover, we examined the spatial, magnitudinal and sequential nature of pitches and syllable names. Participants (N = 33) were asked to hear two successive tones sung by syllable name and to judge the direction of pitch change by pressing vertically arranged buttons. Participants’ accuracy of pitch change judging was found to be influenced by the direction of syllable name change. However, the response location was not found to interact with pitch change or syllable name change. The distance effect was found in pitches but not in syllable names. A sequence effect was found that trials with early-in-sequence syllable names were responded faster than trials with late-in-sequence syllable names. These results suggest that syllable names can influence non-musicians’ pitch judgments in a relative context. We suggest that it is the sequential order of syllable names that is the product of cultural activities that interfere with the judgment of pitch change.

The final thematic special issue in the series ‘The Social Psychology of Social Change: Science and Practice in Asia’ features 10 empirical studies that apply diverse social psychological theories and approaches to understand and to address a wide range of social concerns in Asian societies. The articles in the special issue align more to mainstream social psychological approaches to studying social phenomena, and as such are mainly derivative of Western social psychological paradigms, with the exception of a couple of studies that adopt emic indigenous approaches. Nevertheless, the various studies display a clear motivation to use social psychology to engage particular societal concerns, representing incremental progress towards using social psychology in the service of social change.

Integrative complexity, the interaction of conceptual and cognitive rules, is used in processing information. High integrative complexity people evaluate situations and make decisions diversely; low integrative complexity people reason simplistically and dichotomously. We examined the social psychology of South/North Korean relations in their correspondence by an integrative complexity coding process. Time series analysis predicted mean levels of integrative complexity for each half-year period between 1984 and 1997. Analysis showed that South/North Korean relations exert significant influence on integrative complexity levels. We also found a mutual effect of integrative complexity levels in the two. Major coordinative events relate to a decline in integrative complexity in the following half-year period. During South Korean presidential elections, correspondence integrative complexity levels decline in both.

To obtain rich information about the cognitive diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD), this study attempted to retrofit a traditional borderline personality questionnaire so that the improved assessment (called CDA-BPD) could provide more diagnostic information. The retrofitting processes included the following steps: (1) applied an cognitive diagnosis model to analyze the psychometric characteristics of the traditional questionnaire; (2) under the guidance of cognitive diagnosis assessment (CDA), high-quality items were chosen to develop the CDA-BPD and tested on 1,097 subjects; (3) the quality of the CDA-BPD was evaluated; (4) the structure of the CDA-BPD was analyzed. Results indicated that: (1) the CDA-BPD had acceptable reliability and validity; (2) the CDA-BPD had sensitivity of 0.985 and specificity of 0.853 with area under curve (AUC) = 0.956; (3) the two structural factors of the traditional questionnaire were confirmed in the CDA-BPD; χ2 was 83.01 with df = 26, p < .0001, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.97, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.045. It was concluded that the practice of retrofitting a traditional borderline personality assessment for cognitive diagnostic purpose was feasible. Most importantly, under the cognitive diagnosis model framework, CDA-BPD could simultaneously provide general-level information and the detailed symptom criteria-level information about the posterior probability of satisfying each symptom criterion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edition; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) for each individual, which gave further insight into tailoring individual-specific treatments for borderline personality disorder.

The Pitcairn sexual abuse trial was widely reported in New Zealand newspapers and this study examines constructions of both allegations and explanations of sexual abuse. Discourse analysis was used to study a database of 76 reports from the Dominion Post and New Zealand Herald. The analysis identified three discourses that co-articulate allegations of sexual abuse and attempts to explain and account for these allegations. The first discourse deals with reported allegations of childhood sexual abuse and trauma. The second discourse deflects responsibility from the accused men and lays open explanations drawing on the history and culture of Pitcairn. The third discourse constructs abuse as something that occurred because Britain failed to meet its responsibilities and provide adequate legal and moral guidance. These discourses are discussed in terms of the actions they perform in terms of reducing the level of personal responsibility for crimes of sexual abuse.

The featured articles in the section on cultural diversity across the Pacific address important cultural issues in psychology as applied to psychopathology (Marsella & Yamada, 2011), intercultural relations and acculturation (Berry, 2011) and the phenomenon of culture shock (Furnham, 2011). We appreciate how the three articles offer a wide multidisciplinary lens and view mental problems from this broader vantage point. Beyond narratives of biology and individual personality dispositions, the authors include an anthropologists' eye to viewing mental illness (Marsella & Yamada, 2011), use sociological explanations of intergroup relations in a multicultural model of acculturation (Berry, 2011) and refer to demographic migration patterns to elucidate culture shock among foreign students (Furnham, 2011). The contribution of this set of writings lies in its insightful emphasis on how culture interfaces with one's subjective life. Our essay unpacks the cultural lens used in the psychological accounts, points out conceptual spaces that are largely unexplored in cross-cultural psychology (something that is observed and lamented by these authors in their articles here and elsewhere) and suggests avenues for future research about cultural diversity.

The present study examines whether there are gender differences in eating attitudes among a sample of early adolescents in Hawai'i. A total of 79 female and 65 male 7th graders completed a survey that included measures of eating attitudes and other psychological constructs. Contrary to our prediction, males reported higher levels of disordered eating attitudes and body dissatisfaction than females. However, there were no gender differences in symptom levels of anxiety and depression. Eating attitudes were associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety and self-dissatisfaction among females, while only self-dissatisfaction was associated with eating attitudes among males. The findings fail to support past studies that suggest females report more disordered eating attitudes than males.

This study investigates people's implicit stereotype of the social group of the rich in terms of competence and warmth. We further examine the stereotype's relationship with temporal selves. Implicit Association Tests were used as measures of implicit social perception in a social comparison context. We also rated the degree of psychological connectedness between current and possible future selves across time. Our results demonstrate that the rich are implicitly perceived as having high levels of competence and low levels of warmth compared to the average person, and that a close psychological connectedness mitigates the negative perception of the rich. The implications and limitations of these findings are also discussed.

The present study examined the relationship between parent-child interaction and children's emotion understanding ability. The participants were 56 three-year-old children and their mothers from Beijing, China. Mothers and children took part in three dyadic interaction tasks and were video recorded for coding of both mothers’ and children's behaviours. Each child completed three individually administered tests of emotion understanding, including the facial expression recognition task, emotion perspective-taking task, and emotion reason understanding task. Results demonstrated that both mothers’ and children's interaction behaviours were related to children's emotion understanding. Gender differences were found in the relationships between interaction behaviours and children's emotion understanding. Girls’ emotion understanding was associated with children's positive behaviours. In contrast, boys’ emotion understanding was not associated with children's positive behaviours, but related to mothers’ negative behaviours.

The featured articles in the section on cultural diversity across the Pacific address important cultural issues in psychology as applied to psychopathology (Marsella & Yamada, 2011), intercultural relations and acculturation (Berry, 2011) and the phenomenon of culture shock (Furnham, 2011). We appreciate how the three articles offer a wide multidisciplinary lens and view mental problems from this broader vantage point. Beyond narratives of biology and individual personality dispositions, the authors include an anthropologists' eye to viewing mental illness (Marsella & Yamada, 2011), use sociological explanations of intergroup relations in a multicultural model of acculturation (Berry, 2011) and refer to demographic migration patterns to elucidate culture shock among foreign students (Furnham, 2011). The contribution of this set of writings lies in its insightful emphasis on how culture interfaces with one's subjective life. Our essay unpacks the cultural lens used in the psychological accounts, points out conceptual spaces that are largely unexplored in cross-cultural psychology (something that is observed and lamented by these authors in their articles here and elsewhere) and suggests avenues for future research about cultural diversity.

While opinions on what should be done with youth offenders vary from person to person, perceived levels of safety and fear of crime have been linked to more punitive attitudes towards crime and punishment. Qualitative methods were employed to explore the attitudes and opinions of members of the New Zealand public with varying levels of community safety in respect to the treatment of youth offenders. Results indicate those who identified as lowest in levels of safety were more punitive in their opinions, though they also expressed a firm desire for progressive treatment options such as rehabilitation and taking preventative action. Those who felt the safest in their community were less likely to be punitive in their opinions towards youth offenders.

Recent research has found that a specific manipulation of body postures can influence psychological states associated with power, including an individual’s feeling of power and risk-taking tendency, but the results vary. The purpose of this study is to replicate previous studies. A pilot experiment examined the validity of 10 postures extracted from multiple former studies. Only 4 postures were consistent with former studies. Experiment 1 replicates the study conducted by Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010). The results revealed that posture manipulations did not affect the participants’ risk-taking tendency. Experiment 2 is a preregistered experiment to replicate the study of Carney et al. (2010). Different from Experiment 1, data were analyzed with a Bayesian approach. The results of the former study again failed to be replicated, which indicates that the posture manipulations could not yield any effect on both power feelings and individuals’ risk-taking tendency. Thus, we concluded that (a) holding a specific series of body posture perceived as high or low power does not affect individuals’ feeling of power, and (b) holding a specific series of body posture perceived as high or low power does not affect individuals’ risk-taking tendency.