Arthur Stukas

• PhD
• Professor at La Trobe University

Volunteerism and community involvement have been demonstrated to offer benefits both to communities and to volunteers themselves. However, not every method to encourage these behaviors is equally effective in producing committed volunteers. Drawing on relevant theoretical and empirical literatures, we identify features of efforts that are likely to...

Volunteerism is a key form of community involvement that can provide both physical and mental health benefits for volunteers as well as positive outcomes for the community. However, volunteers become involved for different reasons and recent studies suggest that other-oriented volunteers may accrue greater health benefits than self-oriented volunte...

Volunteerism is a form of prosocial behavior that involves a freely chosen decision to commit a sustained amount of time and effort to helping another person, group, or cause, typically through a nonprofit organization. We provide a thorough review of social-psychological theory and research on volunteering by examining its antecedents, experiences...

Human trafficking involves severe violations of human rights and social action is required to combat it. Past research has identified emotional reactions to victims of trafficking, as well as the perceived cost and efficacy of actions, as significant predictors of willingness to get involved. We surveyed 216 Australians (70% female) to assess their...

Improved research practice is based on estimation of effect sizes rather than statistical significance. We discuss the challenging task of interpreting effect sizes in the research context, with particular attention to social psychological research. We emphasize the need to acknowledge the uncertainty in an effect size estimate, as signaled by the...

Many conspiracy theories implicate scientists and science. We investigated the impact of exposure to scientific conspiracies about biotechnologies. Across three preregistered online studies ( Ns = 1,000), participants who read information about conspiracies involving agribiotechnology companies or biobank scientists were more likely to endorse cons...

Many conspiracy theories implicate scientists and science. We investigated the impact of exposure to scientific conspiracies about biotechnologies. Across three pre-registered online studies (Ns=1,000), participants who read information about conspiracies involving agribiotechnology companies or biobank scientists were more likely to endorse conspi...

Men are privileged economically, politically, and socially, yet some deny this. Previous research suggests that denial of privilege can help to manage the discomfort associated with a privileged identity, but we propose that it serves primarily to preserve privilege. In two preregistered studies (N total = 911 Australian participants) we show that...

Purpose Mass media campaigns are recommended in the “8 best investments for physical activity”. Despite large investment in the English “This Girl Can” (TGC) campaign since 2015, no independent evaluation data are published. This project reports on the TGC campaign licenced for use in Victoria, Australia from 2018 onwards. This project reports on t...

Abstract Introduction Addressing gender inequalities in physical activity is an important public health goal. A major campaign, ‘This Girl Can’ (TGC) was conducted by Sport England from 2015, and TGC was licenced in 2018 by VicHealth in Australia for development and use in a 3-year mass media campaign. The campaign was adapted through formative tes...

Since the introduction of commercial video games in the 1970s, video game players have attracted the perhaps undeserving but negative stereotype of being unpopular and socially dysfunctional. However, with gamers increasing in numbers that now reach billions worldwide, the contents of gamer stereotypes may be in flux. The current study investigated...

Self-report measures are frequently used to assess change in physical activity (PA) levels. Given the limited data from adolescent populations, the primary objective of this study was to examine the responsiveness of a single item measure (SIM) of PA for adolescents to detect change in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) using acceleromet...

Context The use of conservation detection dogs (CDDs) is an established, highly efficient means by which data on cryptic and low-density plant and animal species can be collected in a relatively cost-effective way. Nonetheless, the time and resource costs associated with purchasing, training, and maintaining CDDs can be prohibitive, particularly fo...

People typically enter their social interactions with preconceived beliefs and expectations about how other people will act and they often use these beliefs as guides for their own actions with these others. These actions, in turn, may prompt their interaction partners to behave in ways that confirm the initial beliefs. This phenomenon, in which be...

Interagency partnerships and collaborations underpin a settings-based approach to health promotion in all settings, including sport. This study used an online concept mapping approach to explore the challenges that Regional Sports Assemblies (RSAs) in Victoria, Australia experienced when working in partnerships to develop and deliver physical activ...

There is a significant body of research that examines the antecedents and consequences of population-level disparities in physical activity engagement. However, there are still vast gendered inequalities with women missing out on the associated health benefits of physical activity compared to men. The purpose of this study is to foster a deep under...

Conservation detection dogs (CDDs) are trained to locate biological material from plants and animals of interest to conservation efforts and are often more effective and economical than other detection methods. However, the financial costs of developing and appropriately caring for CDDs can nonetheless prohibit their use, particularly by smaller co...

Conservation Detection Dogs (CDDs) are trained to locate biological material from plants and animals relevant to conservation efforts. CDDs can be more effective and more economical than other survey methods, yet financial costs associated with training and maintaining CDDs, while meeting their welfare needs, can prohibit their use. It takes a grea...

• Professionally trained conservation detection dogs (CDDs) are taught to locate biological targets, including cryptic and low‐density plant and animal species, but have been largely underused in acknow • detecting endangered invertebrates. • This pilot study assessed the ability of four volunteer CDD/handler teams to detect the endangered Alpine s...

Introduction: Negative feedback seeking and excessive reassurance seeking behaviors in interpersonal relationships have been shown to frequently occur in conjunction with levels of depression. Method: We used meta-analysis to examine 102 studies (134 effects), relating depression with negative feedback seeking (k = 31) and/or excessive reassurance...

Although it is well‐established that religious individuals tend to volunteer more than the non‐religious, few studies have examined motivations to volunteer as a potential explanation for this relationship. The present research takes a functional approach to examine whether religiosity drives volunteerism by promoting certain motivations for volunt...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether positive changes in self-reported attitudes toward disability were retained after students had participated in a 12-week voluntary community-based exercise programme for young people with disability. Method: Sixty-eight physiotherapy and exercise physiology students (45 women, 23 men; mean...

The focus of this presentation is the experiences of currently physically 'inactive' women and the micro-level, stigmatising processes that inhibit their engagement with, and experience of, physical activity. The research is situated at the nexus of physical activity, health promotion and associated exercise is medicine discourses. The current Aust...

Background Concerns exist around how to talk about eating disorders (EDs) due to evidence that suggests discussing ED symptoms and behaviours may cause or worsen symptoms in vulnerable people. Using expert consensus, we developed a set of guidelines for giving safe community presentations about EDs. Methods Participants with professional ED experti...

Objective: Although psychological factors have been explored in relation to other life transitions, their influence on retirement adjustment quality has been largely overlooked. This study assessed the contribution of personality traits and generativity before retirement in the prediction of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing at two temporal points a...

Stigma is a problem for individuals with eating disorders (EDs), forming a barrier to disclosure and help-seeking. Interventions to reduce ED stigma may help remove these barriers; however, it is not known which strategies (e.g., explaining etiology to reduce blame, contact with a person with an ED, or educating about ED) are effective in reducing...

Presentations to the community about ED can be an effective way of increasing knowledge and reducing the stigma of EDs. There is no empirical evidence, however, for how to give an effective presentation. In particular, there is little evidence for what information might be harmful to an audience (e.g. trigger ED symptoms). This study recruited part...

When two people come together in social interaction, it is very likely that they hold expectations about one another’s behavior. These expectations may anticipate behaviors based on each other’s appearances, personalities, attitudes, preferences, skills and abilities, goals, mood states, or a host of other salient features. Although beliefs about h...

Purpose: We assessed how 6 psychological performance enhancement techniques (PETs) differentially improved self-efficacy (SE) and skill performance. We also assessed whether vicarious experiences and verbal persuasion as posited sources of SE (Bandura, 1982 ) were supported and, further, if the effects of the 6 PETs remained after controlling for...

Equity theory suggests that perceiving equity leads to better relationship outcomes than perceiving inequity. However, cultural and relationship differences in tolerance for inequity have been found, suggesting that those from more individualistic cultures may have less tolerance for inequity with friends than those from more collectivistic culture...

Intergroup contact has been demonstrated to reduce prejudice toward out-groups under the right conditions; however, real contact experiences are often difficult to arrange. Imagined contact may be an alternative. The current study randomly assigned participants to imagine or to have real contact with a person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Resu...

Helping behaviors are actions designed to assist another person with a problem or to relieve their distress. In this article, we review research that seeks to understand when and why people help others across a continuum of action from spontaneous help (often in emergencies) to episodic help to long-term help epitomized by volunteerism. We outline...

To better understand how body image operates within the context of intimate relationships, we investigated women's responses to appearance feedback from an intimate partner. Participants (N=192) imagined receiving feedback from their partner that was either consistent with their own appearance self-view (i.e., self-verifying), more positive (i.e.,...

This study investigated the proposition that adolescence involves significant shifts in social identity as a function of changes in social context and cognitive style. Using an experimental design, we primed either peer or gender identity with a sample of 380 early- (12-13 years), mid- (15-16 years), and late-adolescents (18-20 years) and then meas...

When threatened with an upward social comparison with a close other in a self-relevant domain, people may reduce either the self-relevance of the ability being compared or their perceived closeness to the other person (Tesser, 1988). Those high in the trait of narcissism may be more likely to push away others who outperform them. Participants and n...

In therapy, the expectations or hypotheses that therapists have of their clients, and the therapeutic strategies they employ with them, could influence identity negotiation processes. In the current study, 38 postgraduate therapist trainees interacted with 72 undergraduate clients in audiotaped counseling sessions. Therapists were led to expect tha...

In social communication, do message senders’ expectations about message recipients play any role in the construction of social stereotypes? In particular, can senders’ expectations about recipients’ attitudes toward social groups initiate a confirmatory process whereby both senders and recipients come to hold the expected attitudes when there is no...

The functional approach to volunteerism holds that outcomes from volunteering (e.g., satisfaction and intentions to remain a volunteer) are a function of the match between a volunteer’s motivations and affordances to meet those motivations found in the environment (i.e., the volunteer activities, position, or organization). In this paper, we introd...

Using email, we investigated intra- and inter-personal variables that may influence self-presentational behavior of those high in narcissism. Participants rated themselves in domains requiring either external validation (e.g., attractiveness) or internal validation (e.g., morality), when either accountable or non-accountable to an evaluative audien...

This study investigated changes in the tripartite self-concept in a sample of pre-, early-, mid-, and late-adolescents. Participants provided self-descriptions under conditions that primed either a personal or social context. As expected, adolescents showed fluctuating use of the individual, relational, and collective levels of self. The collective...

In this chapter, we review strategies for recruiting and retaining volunteers, with a particular focus on volunteers' differing motivations for engaging in community service.

Self-Verification Theory (Swann, 1987) predicts that people want others to see them as they see themselves. But does this theory hold for the (often irrational) self-views held by women with body dissatisfaction or eating disorders? To test this application of Self-Verification Theory, we investigated: (1) whether body dissatisfied women reported b...

In this analytic review, we explore the ways in which an understanding of the use of expectations in social interaction, and their confirmation or disconfirmation, is advanced when interactions are examined in the larger context of the physical and psychological surroundings in which they occur. We focus our discussion on two components of context,...

Individuals' reactions to interpersonal feedback may depend on characteristics of the feedback and the feedback source. The present authors examined the effects of experimentally manipulated personality feedback that they--in the guise of therapists--e-mailed to participants on the degree of their acceptance of the feedback. Consistent with Self-Ve...

A procedural paradigm was created to demonstrate a particular reaction to racism, the principled stand, defined as explicit disagreement accompanied by an abstract or moral principle. After watching a videotape about discrimination, unprejudiced White participants discussed prejudice with a confederate in an unstructured format. The confederate del...

In this chapter, we review theory, research, and practices focused on the factors that influence the recruitment and retention of successful youth mentors.

Volunteerism is often promoted as particularly likely to contribute to social capital, the bonds of trust and reciprocity created in social networks. However, volunteer work may only lead to such beneficial outcomes when certain conditions are met. A functional approach to volunteerism (Snyder, Clary & Stukas 2000) suggests that individual outcomes...

The authors examined whether gay men and lesbians are evaluated more negatively than individuals of unspecified sexual orientation when attributional ambiguity surrounds evaluations and whether they are evaluated similarly to unspecified others when no attributional ambiguity is present. One male and one female lecturer delivered either a strong or...

Efforts to increase involvement of citizens in their communities are now widespread. We discuss key forms of community involvement, such as community service and volunteerism, broadly, and educational initiatives that promote involvement (e.g., service–learning courses) more specifically. There are benefits to be achieved by the promotion of involv...

Participants engaged in a getting-acquainted interaction over an intercom after one participant (the perceiver) was provided with a positive (extraverted) or relatively negative (introverted) expectation about the other participant (the target). After completing evaluations of each other and the interaction, participants interacted for a second tim...

In this chapter, we discuss the conceptual foundations of the functional approach to volunteerism, empirical investigations of the functions served by volunteerism, and linkages between functionalist theorizing in the domain of voluntary helping and in other attitudinal and behavioral domains. These considerations form something of a two way street...

This study examined depression, anxiety, and anger-hostility symptom levels, as well as overall quality of life, in a cohort of 50 lung and heart-lung transplant recipients. Only the subjects' mean anxiety symptoms were substantially elevated over normative levels. However, nearly half of the sample showed clinically significant distress in one or...

During its 10-year existence, the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) has been extremely successful at recruiting potential bone marrow donors to join the volunteer registry. Due in part to successful recruitment and the longevity of the registry, the focus of the NMDP has now shifted to decreasing potential attrition when volunteers are recontact...

The current study sought to provide a better understanding of the reactions of bone-marrow volunteers to the possibility of donating by examining these volunteers in the context of their closest relationships. Using Tesser's (1988) self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model as a guide, we examined the influence of spouses who are also volunteers on ea...

Students may be predisposed to benefit from mandatory service-learning programs based on their gender and upon whether their parents serve as models of helping. The role of each of these variables was examined in a survey of seventh grade students (n = 86) who were required to complete service during the school year. Results demonstrated that girls...

This investigation examined medical students' motivations for participating in a volunteer community-based program for pregnant women provided primarily to traditionally underserved groups. Demographic, psychosocial, and motivational characteristics of 40 students participating in the Maternal Care Program were assessed with a self-report instrumen...

Posttraumatic stress disorder associated with transplantation (PTSD-T) is a complication for some heart transplant recipients. By using a structured, standardized interview and DSM-III-R criteria, the authors examined whether recipients (n = 158) and their family caregivers (n = 142) showed similar PTSD-T rates and clinical characteristics during t...

This analytic review is concerned with the interpersonal processes, and the characteristics of situations and persons that influence them, that lead to the confirmation and disconfirmation of expectations in the course of social interaction. We examine the steps in the chain of events by which the expectations of one person guide and direct the dyn...

Abstract—With the widespread emergence of required community-service programs comes a new opportunity to examine the effects of requirements on future behavioral intentions. To investigate the consequences of such “mandatory volunteerism” programs, we followed students who were required to volunteer in order to graduate from college. Results demons...

The authors applied functionalist theory to the question of the motivations underlying volunteerism, hypothesized 6 functions potentially served by volunteerism, and designed an instrument to assess these functions (Volunteer Functions Inventory; VFI). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on diverse samples yielded factor solutions consiste...

This study examined patterns of change in the physical health and well-being of 133 family caregivers to heart transplant recipients during the 1st year after transplant. Caregivers were assessed at 2, 7, and 12 months after transplant. Cluster analysis was used to identify temporal profiles reflecting unique patterns of change in the direction and...

In this chapter, we will discuss our program of research on voluntarism, focusing on the motivational dynamics underlying participation in volunteer service, and we will consider some of the implications of our research for service-learning experiences and programs. Our examination of these issues is guided by two overall considerations drawn from...

The present investigation used responses to Independent Sector's 1992 national survey of giving and volunteering in the United States to address several questions about the motivations of volunteers. Drawing on the functional approach to volunteers' motivations, and its operationalization in the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI), relations betwee...