Poorer language ability is a known risk factor for elevated depressive symptoms. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this association remain underexplored. Utilizing data from a comprehensive pre-birth cohort in Singapore (N = 473; 49.9% boys; 57.3% Chinese, 27.9% Malay, 14.8% Indian), the present study examined whether (i) self-concept domains mediate the association between early language ability and depressive symptoms during preadolescence, and (ii) these indirect pathways differ by child sex. Children’s early language ability was assessed at ages 2 and 4 using standardized assessments of vocabulary and phonological processing. Self-concept and depressive symptoms were measured at ages 8.5 and 10, respectively. Results indicated that the domain of behavioral adjustment mediated the relationship between early language ability and subsequent depressive symptoms for girls (β = −0.07, 95% CI [−0.15, −0.01]), whereas happiness and satisfaction served as a key mediator for boys (β = −0.12, 95% CI [−0.24, −0.03]). After accounting for these mediators, there was no direct association between early language ability and depressive symptoms. These findings highlight potential sex-specific mechanisms through which early language ability is prospectively associated with depressive symptoms. Future research is necessary to determine whether enhancing self-concept can mitigate depressive symptoms in children with early language difficulties.

Many legal disputes are resolved through settlement. The dominant theory explaining settlements – known as “bargaining in the shadow of the law” – assumes that litigants are informed, rational actors inclined to bargain toward a settlement prior to court proceedings. Yet many settlements are negotiated after litigants have appeared in court expecting to go to trial. This article argues that court organizational mechanisms play an undertheorized role in facilitating settlement agreements. To build theory on organizational mechanisms, we examine the case of eviction settlements. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews in a California eviction court, we find that organizational rules and workgroup norms funnel mostly unrepresented tenants – sometimes, in coercive ways – into unregulated hallway conversations with landlord attorneys and/or participation in the court’s mediation program. Through relational interactions with legal professionals in these organizational spaces, tenants are taught the risks of trial and the benefits of settlement. As a result, most tenants in our sample come to recognize their legal culpability and view settlement agreements as legitimate, even as their negotiated settlements reproduce their housing insecurity. We discuss implications for bargaining theory and research on housing insecurity.

Although temperamental negative affectivity has been identified as a developmental mechanism mediating the link between perinatal risk and internalizing problems in early childhood, its role in predicting broader behavioral and emotional problems across childhood remains understudied. We examined the longitudinal relations among perinatal complications (i.e., prenatal maternal depression and cardiometabolic complications, preterm birth, and low birth weight), children’s negative affectivity (Mage = 2.76; SD = 2.32; range = 0.24–12.46 years), and children’s internalizing, externalizing, and total problems (Mage = 5.12; SD = 2.63; range = 1.50–16.85 years) in the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program (N = 3070; 47% females). Results support child negative affectivity as a mechanism in the developmental pathway linking perinatal maternal depressive symptoms and preterm birth to future emotional and behavioral problems, underscoring the importance of early prevention and intervention efforts to promote psychological well-being of at-risk children.

Recent research suggests that emotions are a central motivation for radical right voting. One emotion that has gained particular interest is nostalgia: Radical right politicians use nostalgic rhetoric, and feeling nostalgic is associated with radical right support. However, while nostalgia is widely and frequently experienced, previous work differentiates personal contents of nostalgia (e.g., childhood) from group‐based contents (e.g., traditions) and suggests that only the latter is related to the radical right. But why does nostalgia, and specifically its group‐based content, matter? In the present paper, I argue that nostalgia evokes implicit comparisons between the past and the present. Using relative deprivation theory, I posit that group‐based nostalgia makes people subjectively evaluate society's present as worse than its past. In turn, this temporal group‐based relative deprivation is associated with attempts to restore the past through radical right voting. Personal nostalgia, instead, does not evoke equivalent experiences of personal relative deprivation and is, therefore, unrelated to radical right support. In preregistered analyses of representative panel data from the Netherlands, I show that group‐based nostalgia is more consistently related to radical right support than personal nostalgia. In subsequent exploratory analyses, I test the relative deprivation argument and find that group‐based relative deprivation does indeed mediate the relationship between group‐based nostalgia and radical right voting: People who long for the group‐based past are more likely to feel dissatisfied with the government and, in turn, consider voting for the radical right. In studying this mechanism, I connect recent work on emotional and relative deprivation explanations to radical right voting.

Market orientation has been presented as an important predictor of business performance, and it is presumed to contribute to long-term success in both profit-oriented and non-profit enterprises. Similarly, entrepreneurial orientation is a concept that has been widely applied to business firms but has not been empirically tested in social enterprises. Moreover, the literature does not present a widely accepted and tested conceptual model relating entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and performance, in the realm of social enterprises. In order to fill this gap, this research assesses how these strategic orientations affect social and economic performance in the setting of social enterprises. Structural equation modeling was used as a means to analyze the hypothesized relationships. After testing the model on a sample of 805 Portuguese social enterprises, the findings show that both social entrepreneurship and market orientations significantly impact social performance. The results also indicate that market orientation mediates the effect of social entrepreneurship orientation on the performance of social enterprises.

Along with other South-European countries, since 2008, Greece has experienced deep economic and social dislocation, leading to a crisis of representation and triggering populist mobilisations and anti-populist reactions. This article focuses on the antagonistic language games developed around populist representations, something that has not attracted much attention in the relevant literature. Highlighting the need to study anti-populism together with populism, focusing on their mutual constitution from a discursive perspective, it articulates a brief yet comprehensive genealogy of populist and anti-populist actors (parties and media) in Greece, exploring their discursive strategies. Moving on, it identifies the main characteristics this antagonistic divide took on within the newly contested, crisis-ridden sociopolitical field, highlighting the implications for a contemporary understanding of cleavages, with potentially broader implications.

The ENHANCE non-inferiority trial that took place in a deprived setting in Pakistan demonstrated that a technology-assisted digital adaptation of the Technology Assisted Thinking Healthy Programme (THP-TAP) was no different than the face-to-face THP in improving symptoms of perinatal depression. The present study examines the mechanisms through which THP-TAP improved symptoms of perinatal depression (or not) compared to the face-to-face THP.

We applied a counterfactual-based approach to mediation – particularly interventional effects – to decompose the total effect of the THP-TAP intervention on symptoms of perinatal depression into the following pre-specified indirect effects: number of sessions attended; behavioural activation; perceived social support; problem-solving and cognitive-restructuring skills; and peer empathy. Mediators were assessed at 3 months post-partum, and depressive symptoms were measured at 6 months using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).

Perceived social support in THP-TAP arm mediated an improvement in symptoms of perinatal depression compared to the standard face-to-face THP group (adjusted mean difference in PHQ-9 scores attributable to perceived social support in the technology-assisted digital adaptation of the THP group compared to the World Health Organisation THP group: −0.072, bias-corrected 95% confidence interval: −0.170, −0.018). There was no difference to support the indirect effects for all other mediators.

Even in the absence of treatment superiority, our findings suggest that levels of perceived social support were an important feature of the THP-TAP intervention, which resulted in improved symptoms of perinatal depression. From a practical perspective, these findings highlight the importance of social connectedness as a mechanism of change, demonstrating that peer-delivered digital psychosocial interventions can successfully cultivate this relational component.

This study examines the underlying mechanisms driving the bilingual advantage in learning English as a foreign language (EFL) among kindergarten-aged children. Participants included 85 Dutch-speaking monolinguals and 34 bilingual children. We assessed children’s English vocabulary and grammar as the outcome variables. Furthermore, phonological awareness, executive functions and motivation to learn English were measured as potential mediators of the bilingualism–EFL relationship. We also controlled for child age, non-verbal IQ, Dutch (majority language) proficiency, intensity of school English instruction, parental education and exposure to English activities. Results showed that bilingual children outperformed monolinguals in English receptive vocabulary, but only for noncognate words; no differences emerged for cognate words or English grammar. However, none of the proposed mediators explained this advantage. Findings are discussed in terms of why the effect was limited to vocabulary and potential alternative mechanisms not explored in the present study.