Browsing by Author "Us, Elif Oyku"

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Citation - WoS: 12
Citation - Scopus: 14
Do changes in threat salience predict the moral content of sermons? The case of Friday Khutbas in Turkey
(John Wiley and Sons Ltd vgorayska@wiley.com Southern Gate Chichester West Sussex PO19 8SQ, 2020) Sinan Alper; Fatih Bayrak; Elif Öykü Us; Onurcan Yilmaz; Alper, Sinan; Yilmaz, Onurcan; Bayrak, Fatih; Us, Elif Oyku
We analyzed the content of “Friday Khutbas” delivered in Turkish mosques between January 2001 and December 2018 to test the prediction of moral foundations theory (MFT) literature that threat salience would lead to an increased endorsement of binding moral foundations. As societal-level indicators of threat we examined (a) historical data on the proportion of terrorism-related news published in a Turkish newspaper (b) the geopolitical risk score of Turkey as measured by Geopolitical Risk Index and (c) Google Trends data on the search frequency of words “terror” “terrorism” or “terrorist”. To measure the endorsement of moral foundations we built a Turkish Moral Foundations Dictionary and counted the relative frequency of morality-related words in the khutbas delivered in Istanbul Turkey. Time series analyses showed that risk salience in a certain month was positively related to endorsement of the loyalty/betrayal foundation in that month’s Friday Khutbas. There were mixed results for the other moral foundations. © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Citation - Scopus: 1
The evil eye effect: vertical pupils are perceived as more threatening
(Routledge info@tandf.co.uk, 2019) Sinan Alper; Elif Öykü Us; Dicle Rojda Tasman; Alper, Sinan; Tasman, Dicle Rojda; Us, Elif Oyku
Popular culture has many examples of evil characters having vertically pupilled eyes. Humans have a long evolutionary history of rivalry with snakes and their visual systems were evolved to rapidly detect snakes and snake-related cues. Considering such evolutionary background we hypothesised that humans would perceive vertical pupils which are characteristics of ambush predators including some of the snakes as threatening. In seven studies (aggregate N = 1458) conducted on samples from American and Turkish samples we found that vertical pupils are perceived as more threatening on both explicit (Study 1) and implicit level (Studies 2–7) and they are associated with physical rather than social threat (Study 4). Findings provided partial support regarding our hypothesis about the relevance of snake detection processes: Snake phobia and not spider phobia was found to be related to perceiving vertical pupils as threatening (Study 5) however an experimental manipulation of saliency of snakes rendered no significant effect (Study 6) and a comparison of fears of snakes alligators and cats did not support our prediction (Study 7). We discuss the potential implications and limitations of these novel findings. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.