Volume 29, Issue 1

Although the research on compassion is growing, there is a lack of knowledge about how non-expert people perceive compassion. Therefore, the aim of the study was to explore compassion from the perspective of non-experts. Our sample consisted of 56 non-expert participants (Slovaks and Czechs) in 10 focus groups and we conducted a Consensual Qualitative Research analysis with two members of a core team and one auditor. In general, compassion was described as a mixture of non-specified positive emotions and specified negative emotions (mainly fear, remorse, and sadness). Compassion was related to empathy. In terms of behaviours, compassion was revealed to help, support, favour, mental closeness, and interest. Compassion is displayed mainly to people close to us in situations of suffering. However, people tend to evaluate beforehand whether the situation and person deserve compassion. Moreover, people are cautious about being exploited through compassion. To sum up, our findings support a multidimensional definition of compassion.

Emotion-Focused Training for Emotion Coaching (EFT-EC) is based on Emotion-focused Therapy findings and was developed to help participants deepen their emotional skills. The goal was to examine the efficacy of a 12-week EFT-EC group program the level of emotion intelligence, self-compassion and self-criticism in a student population. A quasi-experiment with no control group was conducted with pre- and post-measurements using The Self-compassion scale (SCS), the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS), and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire – short form (TEIQue-SF). The EFT-EC participants were128 students. The EFT-EC intervention had a significant effect on self-criticism and self-control latent scores as reported at post-measurement. The structural equation model with latent variables was not an adequate fit for the rest of the subscales. These results are promising and suggest that interventions intended to enhance emotion skills can also reduce self-criticism even when not directly addressing it.

Drug misuse is a complex social and health problem. People who use drugs have very specific profiles according to their life cycle and sociocultural circumstances. For this reason, contextualized approaches are needed in addiction interventions that take on board the particularities of consumption patterns and their circumstances. The storytelling technique as a narrative communication strategy can serve as the main methodological intervention component that enhances this contextualized approach.

The focus of this study is alternative spiritual groups among the urban population in Slovakia. Those who participate in them may be characterized as “spiritual, but not religious” (Willard & Norenzayan, 2017)—people who are not affiliated to a traditional (Christian) church, and may even have negative opinions on the Church, but who seek a different kind of spiritual experience. As Willard and Norenzayan pointed out the “spiritual, but not religious” have “an experiential relationship to the supernatural, and see themselves as more connected to the universe as a whole”. The authors studied spiritual gatherings containing elements of rituals, dance and narrative sharing and that were charged with different kinds of emotions. We are interested in people’s motivation to seek out alternative spirituality and in their preferences for group experiences. Based on theories of collective rituals and shared emotions, we assume that these gatherings may have a positive impact on general well-being and be a form of social and emotional resilience.

Positive intergroup contact and cross-group friendships are known to have numerous benefits for intergroup relations in diverse schools. However, children do not always spontaneously engage in cross-group friendships, choosing rather to spend time with their ingroup peers. Several factors have previously been identified that influence children’s confidence in contact and subsequent development of cross-group friendships, including perceived intergroup similarity and reconciliation of intergroup differences. However, inducing perceived similarity may pose a threat to the person’s social identity and increase the need for distinctiveness. Therefore, it remains unclear how one should manipulate perceived similarity and group boundaries when designing interventions that prepare school children for successful contact. Moreover, eliminating perceived group boundaries need not lead to the generalization of improved attitudes towards the outgroup. An optimal balance of inclusion and differentiation between the groups should be determined so as to make way for beneficial cross-group friendships. Based on a literature review, we provide recommendations for designing prejudice reduction interventions in schools from the perspective of intergroup similarity.

In her groundbreaking work, Elinor Ostrom suggested that communities are able to self-organize and develop rules which allow them to effectively manage common-pool resources while avoiding the “tragedy of the commons”, as proposed by Hardin. Based on empirical case studies of how forests, irrigation, grazing land and fisheries are organized all over the world, Ostrom suggested several principles that can serve as guidelines for managing common-pool resources. In the 21st century new initiatives have been based on sharing. There are various examples such as car and bike sharing in cities, internet platforms such as Wikipedia, community gardens and many others. There is a reason to believe that these efforts will continue to grow and become more popular as people realise the economic, social and ecological benefits. The aim of this paper is to analyse to what extent Ostrom’s findings are relevant to these new, often urbanised or digitalised forms of sharing. Can the famous design principles for which she won the Nobel prize be applied or do we need to search for a different set of principles that are more suitable for these new emerging forms of ‘the commons’? Our findings suggest that although Ostrom’s framework needs to be adapted before being applied to the reality of urban and digitalised environments, some of her findings remain relevant.

The working poor are not a clearly defined group. There are still people who work full-time, but have incomes bordering on poverty level. They tend to remain in work despite their low wages simply to avoid becoming unemployed and risk social exclusion. However, working in low-income jobs for long periods creates stress and gives rise to further problems. Stress affects sleep patterns and leads to problems associated with food intake and nutrition, and thus to disorders of the gastrointestinal system. Cardiovascular and neurological disorders may occur too. A lack of finances, and the stresses stemming from that are statistically significant and a strong predictor of a worse mental state. There is also a higher probability of psychosis occurring. All this affects the entire family, especially children. The inability to invest money and time in their development is another consequence.

Based on their fates, it is possible to categorise the Jewish population of Slovakia from 1938 to 1945 into four groups (which can be further subdivided). The most extensive group were the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and labour camps in Slovakia. They were followed by “legal Jews”, hidden Jews, “Aryan” Jews, who used false “Aryan” documents in the mainstream society, and last but not least, fighters in partisan units or allied armies. This study analyzes the way of survival of the “Aryan Jews” following the materials gained by oral history and information from professional literature and memoirs. I focused on preparation, way of obtaining false documents, life in the mainstream society, and hidden emotions when confronted with captured Jews. Although physically “nothing had happened” to most of them, the Aryan Jews were exposed to constant stress; psychological impacts of “the life in disguise” accompanied them a long time after liberation.

The article aims at integrating the cultural psychology perspective of into the multidisciplinary field of border studies. It analyses the border phenomenon as a co-genetic system. The authors investigate the psychological side of people who relate to the border out of different motives. Then, it expands some of the theoretical concepts current in border studies by introducing psychological dimensions such as intentionality and directionality. Finally, the framework is applied to two case-studies representing the northern and southern European Union frontiers: the case of Estonian officer Eston Kohver in the Setumaa region on the Estonian–Russian border; and the experiences of border guards in the re-bordering process on the Spanish– Moroccan border. It offers an innovative conceptual resource based on a triadic co-genetic epistemological approach, which allows us to overcome the binary oppositions still very present in the contemporary debates in borders studies.