Martijn van Zomeren doesn’t hate hope. But he certainly thinks hope is overrated. Recent research found that when people were more hopeful about solving climate change, they were not more motivated to do anything about it. Hoping may thus make us feel better, while doom is coming to the world.
We, two Research Master students, went to Bolivia to support the project of Drs. Nina Hansen and Judith Daniels. We interviewed 100 women about the effect of trauma on female empowerment. We carried home a rich data set and stories that cannot be easily expressed in figures.
How does the experience of trauma impact women’s empowerment and economic participation over time? Social and clinical psychologists join efforts to follow the development of Bolivian girls over the next ten years.
Most of us may be horrified by mass shootings, but might some people get inspired by such attacks? We explore how certain gun owners, especially those struggling with failure and fear, could become tempted to perceive their own guns as sources of personal empowerment.