(1) Background: The present study examined how social comparison orientation, stress appraisal and different social comparison strategies interact in women facing chronic illness. (2) Methods: Assessments were conducted by a trained professional in face-to face semistructured interviews (n = 179 women with chronic illness). Main outcome measures included social comparison scales and a stress appraisal questionnaire. The mediation model, by a bootstrapping procedure, was used to analyze the interaction among variables. (3) Results: Regarding the relationships among variables studied, they were related to each other except for a downward contrast, which allowed us to propose our hypothetical mediation model. Results showed that stress appraisal fully mediates between social comparison orientation and social comparison strategies except for the upward identification strategy. (4) Conclusions: Our results suggest that uncertainty, feelings of threat and low control over one’s illness or, in general, stress appraisal, had an important mediating effects over social comparison processes in patients with chronic illnesses. Therefore, by understanding the stress appraisal process, and the variables that might modify it, we could improve the use of social comparison as a favorable coping strategy.

Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon that includes a lack of education, health or housing; it is a relevant factor of social vulnerability that could lead to a situation of social exclusion. According to studies, poverty can be explained by external/social, internal/individual or cultural fatalistic factors. The aim was to confirm the structure of causal attributions of poverty and their relationships with sociodemographic characteristics, as well as religious and political beliefs, in young people. This is a cross-sectional study with a non-probabilistic convenience sample of undergraduate students on different degree courses. A survey was administered to 278 participants (45.4% women) with an average age of 21.59. They were young people studying health science degrees (78.4%) who self-identified as belonging to the lower or middle–lower class (57.2%), without any religious beliefs (56.5%) and as left wing (37.8%; n = 94) or center-left (27.7%; n = 69) in their political orientation. Confirmatory factorial analysis and multiple regression analysis supported the results in previous literature (CFI = 0.90, SRMR = 0.07, RMSEA = 0.06), indicating that there are cultural (C), external (E-S) and internal (I) attribution factors of poverty. The results show moderate relationships between the cultural factor and internal or external factors. The findings show that political affiliation and sex are the most consistent predictors of attributions for poverty.

Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon that encompasses privation of education, health or housing. Women show more positive perceptions of poor people, making external attributions for the causes of poverty or the circumstances that explain it. The aim of this study is to analyse perceptions of poverty, identifying the differences in attitudinal profiles between women and men, and the influence of their political and religious beliefs. The sample consists of 278 participants (154 women and 124 men), who completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and the Scale of Attitudes and Stereotypes toward Poverty. The results showed two attitude profiles for women and men, with differences in the first profile, where women or men did not have religious beliefs, had left-wing or centre-left political ideas and favourable attitudes about poverty.

Controlling the spread of COVID-19 requires individuals to adopt preventive behaviours, but conspiracy beliefs about its origin are spreading. The aim of this paper is to better comprehend the strength of conspiracy beliefs versus objective COVID-19 information to predict people’s adherence to protective behaviours (getting vaccinated, being tracked through APPs, and keeping social distance from infected people). Study 1 shows that COVID-19 implicit theories detected in the Pre-study were activated as independent factors that constitute people’s interpretations of the virus origin. These beliefs were related to a lesser intention to engage in preventive behaviours and a higher level of mistrust in institutional information, although some beliefs generate positive expectations about COVID-19 consequences. In Study 2, conducted with a different sample, official COVID-19 information was included as an independent variable, but this new variable did not further explain results. Lastly, Study 3 consisting of both previous samples confirmed that conspiracy beliefs had a direct effect on a lesser willingness to engage in preventive actions, a higher mistrust, and positive expectations about COVID-19 consequences. We conclude that objective COVID-19 information did not buffer the effect of conspiracy beliefs; they interfere with actions to prevent it by taking institutions as scapegoats or complicit with secret powers.

A topic of interest about prostitution research is the assessment of beliefs or attitudes related to. The Levin and Peled (2011) scale of Attitudes Toward Prostitutes and Prostitution is an innovative instrument with a quantitative methodology approach. Our aim will be to test the preliminary psychometric properties of this scale in Spanish population. Our sample included 357 students from the Miguel Hernández University. Most of them (74.8%; n = 267) are women and the rest are men (n = 90; 25.2%). The mean age was 20.8 years (SD: ± 4.6). The scale of Levin y Peled (2011) was culturally adapted by the research team and it was administered to selected sample. We analyze the internal consistency and construct validity. The Total Scale, Attitudes towards Prostitution Scale, and Election-Victim Prostitution subscale, showed internal consistency ≥.80. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test was ≥. 80 and Bartlett test was significant (p = .000) were satisfactory scores for 2 or 4 factor models. We could not get any model to reproduce the same structure of original scale. The item analysis showed some item-total correlations <.20 that suggest to review them. As a conclusion, the authors support both models for 2 or 4 factors represent the scale in a coherent way with the theoretical framework.

This study takes the perspective of the theory of ethical witnessing. We analyse whether there is a difference in a discourse transmitted in a frame of reference based on ethical witnessing versus a discourse transmitted in the frame of hegemonic discourse based on the hierarchical testimony. This study tests the hypothesis that discourses diverging from the communication hierarchy and, consequently, from the interpretation frame established about gender-based violence, transform the elaboration, comprehension, and structure of questioning the victim’s suffering. The sample comprised 300 individuals, 85 identifying as male and 215 identifying as female. This study adopted a two-factorial (2 × 2) design comparing the testimony of gender-based violence (ethical witnessing vs. hierarchical testimony) and familiarity with the victim’s testimony (Yes vs. No). The results show that communications based on the ethical witnessing format are more effective in transforming the perception of gender-based violence than those using a hierarchical format. This study adopts the framework of ethical witnessing to examine whether discourse differs when conveyed through this lens, compared to discourse shaped by a hegemonic, hierarchical testimony. We test the hypothesis that narratives which deviate from traditional communication hierarchies—and thus from dominant interpretative frameworks surrounding gender-based violence—significantly influence how the victim’s suffering is processed, understood, and questioned. The global resonance of the #MeToo movement exemplifies the transformative potential of ethical testimony, as it amplified the voices of survivors while challenging traditional hierarchies of credibility and authority in public discourse.