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The human relationship with nature is a topic that has been explored throughout human history. More recently, the idea of connection to nature has merged as an important transdisciplinary field of study. Despite increased scholarly attention to connection to nature, the notion of disconnection from nature remains undertheorized and understudied. In this perspective article, we argue for a more comprehensive understanding of disconnection from nature to strengthen theories of human‐nature relationships that goes beyond individual relationships and considers social and collective factors of disconnection, including institutional, socio‐cultural and power dimensions. Drawing on case insights, we present the ‘wheel of disconnection’ to illustrate how disconnections from nature manifest across individual or societal meaning‐making processes, thereby problematizing existing research that seeks to create dualisms between human positive and negative impacts on the environment in isolation from cultural or political contexts. We do not seek to discount research or important practical efforts to foster an individual's connection to nature by elevating disconnection. Instead, we hope that creating greater awareness and understanding of disconnection will be able to guide opportunities going forward for strengthening a connection to nature along a continuum from the individual to the social. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

This article endeavors to advance research on the cultural resonance of brands by building bridges between branding scholarship in the consumer psychology tradition and interpretive research regarding brands and their meaning makers. We adopt a cognitivist conceptualization of cultural meaning and focus on the application of interpretive insights to well-established constructs in the consumer psychology of brands: brand associations, product category associations, social identity, and self-identity. This integrative exercise highlights the value of cultural models in explaining the processes whereby brands acquire meaning, and suggests several themes that are under-valued when considering this process problem through a psychological lens: the motivational underpinnings of myths and other cultural meaning models, the relative value of shared cultural and brand meanings versus idiosyncratic meanings, the power and primacy of category-level meaning making over brand-level meaning making, the complex processes whereby brands gain and lose legitimacy, and the influence of lay theories about brands and branding on how consumers co-create meaning for brands.

Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positive and negative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our Distancing-Embracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories.

Abstract This narrative essay explores the experience of a cancer survivor confronting progressive voice loss after head and neck cancer treatment. Through his evolving relationship with speech, identity, and connection, both patient and psychologist reflect on the meaning and presence of voice, spoken and otherwise, as a tool for healing, expression, and connection.

Part of the task in studying human evolution is developing a deep understanding of what we share, and do not share, with other life, as a mammal, a primate, a hominin, and as members of the genus Homo. A key aspect of this last facet is gained via the examination of the genus Homo across the Pleistocene. By at least the later Pleistocene members of the genus Homo began to habitually insert shared meaning into and onto their world forming one of the bases of contemporary human abilities to develop a distinctive human niche and human culture. Meaning‐laden cultural dynamics constitute the core of a ubiquitous semiotic ecosystem, which in turn structures the architecture of the complex niches and niche construction processes that characterize humanity today. Here, I offer a summary of Pleistocene evolution of the genus Homo and an argument for when and how that extensive and distinctive capacities for shared meaning‐making and a particularly dynamic niche construction emerged.

Background Population and environmental health research illustrate a positive relationship between access to greenspace or natural environments and peoples’ perceived health, mental health, resilience, and overall well-being. This relationship is also particularly strong among Canadian Indigenous populations and social determinants of health research where notions of land, health, and nature can involve broader spiritual and cultural meanings. Among Indigenous youth health and resilience scholarship, however, research tends to conceptualize land and nature as rural phenomena without any serious consideration on their impacts within urban cityscapes. This study contributes to current literature by exploring Indigenous youths’ meaning-making processes and engagements with land and nature in an urban Canadian context. Methods Through photovoice and modified Grounded Theory methodology, this study explored urban Indigenous youth perspectives about health and resilience within an inner-city Canadian context. Over the course of one year, thirty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted with Indigenous (Plains Cree First Nations and Métis) youth along with photovoice arts-based and talking circle methodologies that occurred once per season. The research approach was also informed by  Etuaptmumk or a “two-eyed seeing” framework where Indigenous and Western “ways of knowing” (worldviews) can work alongside one another. Results Our strength-based analyses illustrated that engagement with and a connection to nature, either by way of being present in nature and viewing nature in their local urban context, was a central aspect of the young peoples’ photos and their stories about those photos. This article focuses on three of the main themes that emerged from the youth photos and follow-up interviews: (1) nature as a calming place; (2) building metaphors of resilience; and (3) providing a sense of hope. These local processes were shown to help youth cope with stress, anger, fear, and other general difficult situations they may encounter and navigate on a day-to-day basis. Conclusions This study contributes to the literature exploring Indigenous youths’ meaning-making process and engagements with land and nature in an urban context, and highlights the need for public health and municipal agencies to consider developing more culturally safe and meaningful natural environments that can support the health, resilience, and well-being of Indigenous youth within inner-city contexts.

Sociologists agree that there is something cultural that exists within individuals, in interactions, and in objects. And yet the process through which the culture inside individuals interacts with the culture outside of them is only partially understood and is generally untested. Relying on a novel quasi‐experimental design, we investigate how the culture within individuals, interactions, and objects operates in the making of shared meanings. First, we find that cultural schemas set a baseline for shared meanings of objects. Second, we find that shared meanings are also made through interactions, and more vociferously between individuals with shared schemas. Third, we find that objects encoded with meanings set a higher baseline in interpretive clarity than more ambiguous objects. Lastly, we find that schema similarity and interactions jointly lead to greater shared meanings for more ambiguous objects, suggesting that individuals within groups work rapidly toward generating institutionalized and objectified meanings for objects when those assigned meanings do not yet exist. Findings begin to uncover the routine mechanisms of shared meaning creation, pointing toward new empirical frontiers in culture and cognition.

(1) Background: The role of culture in secular, spiritual, and religious coping methods is important, but needs more attention in research. The aim has been to (1) investigate the meaning-making coping methods among cancer patients in Turkey and (2) whether there were differences in two separate samples (compared to Study 2, Study 1 had a younger age group, was more educated, and grew up in a big city), (3) paying specific attention to gender, age, education, and area of residence. (2) Methods: Quantitative study using a convenience sampling in two time periods, Study 1 (n = 94) and Study 2 (n = 57). (3) Results: In Study 2, there is a significant increase in several religious and spiritual coping strategies. Additionally, there is a positive correlation between being a woman and using more religious or spiritual coping strategies. Secular meaning-making coping strategies also increase significantly in Study 2. The results confirmed the hypotheses for gender, educational, and age differences in seeking support from religious leaders. The results also confirmed the hypotheses for gender and educational level in a punishing God reappraisal and demonic reappraisal. (4) Conclusions: As Turkey is a country at the junction of strong religiosity and deep-rooted secularism, dividing up the meaning-making coping methods into the religious and spiritual, on one hand, and the secular, on the other, reveals interesting results.

Mega-sporting events offer numerous benefits to communities. Attending such events often evokes positive emotions, and residents can derive meaning from them. However, there remains a gap in understanding what hosting these events means to residents. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of hosting a mega-sporting event on the public's perception of personal and social benefits of elite sport. The study also examines the mediating role of meaning-making in the relationship between these benefits and the acceptance of elite sport policies. Data were collected from Tokyo residents at two points in time (Time 1: September 7-9, 2021, and Time 2: September 7-9, 2022). The final dataset included 714 valid responses. Drawing on the dual-process theory, the study found that meaning-making mediates both perceived personal and social benefits in relation to the acceptance of elite sport policies. These findings offer valuable insights into how residents interpret their experiences.

The discussion deals with the reading of multimodal texts by determining the student's ability to interpret content, expressed pictorially and verbally, while simultaneously understanding information from both semiotic resources. When reading multimodal texts, the student usually focuses on the verbal resource and the pictorial one is considered marginal. We conducted research to understand the dynamic in students’ meaning extraction from the textbook, their ability to understand the text, and their greater attention to one resource or to both resources. The research proves that these students comprehend the information by focusing on the text, while the pictorial is interpreted as an addition.