It has been a year now since we lost Professor Spielberger. He was no stranger to congresses, higher education and research in tropical regions: Australia, India, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Spain and Turkey to name a few. This international psychologist, so familiar to most of us, certainly deserves our review for his scientific and professional contributions. A master of diplomacy, and a wise mentor, we can now begin to see the full scope of his influence.

An etic approach was used to describe the values of Filipino adolescents and to show how pan-cultural comparisons using a values survey can complement emic approaches to studying values. Participants were 752 adolescents who answered the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). The results indicate that PVQ has structural validity and adequate internal consistency. Ranks of the value types were compared with pan-cultural student norms; the results indicate that (a) Filipino adolescents’ value type hierarchies are substantially similar (same top, same middle, same bottom ranked values), and (b) Filipino adolescents gave higher rankings for hedonism and stimulation and lower ranking for achievement.

I have welcomed comment from our Editorial Board and other experts on this topic, consistent with a major focus of our journal. First comment received is from Koong Hean Foo, PhD (Psych, NZ); PGD (CBT, NZ), Psychology Lecturer, James Cook University, Australia at JCU Singapore, which follows below. -Robert F. Morgan, Editor

This paper provides landmarks for the study of the historical development and current expansion of academic psychology and clinical psychology education in Australia and three countries of the Malay Archipelago (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore). It reviews literature on the history of clinical psychology, and information from universities and psychological associations, and includes an overview of the current providers and forms of psychology education programmes and their curricula. A critical analysis informed by cultural anthropology indicates that psychology has only to a small extent been adjusted to different cultural contexts, while ‘western’ models of the discipline remain dominant. The neglect of attention to culture in psychology and clinical psychology raises important questions about the future of the discipline in the tropical regions of Australia and the Malay Archipelago.

Awareness and comprehension of the Queensland Police Service (QPS) caution was investigated in a group (N = 140) of university students in Queensland, Australia. Awareness was measured before participants were shown and read aloud the QPS caution; comprehension was then assessed. Participants also completed the Australian Legal Awareness Questionnaire (ALAQ) to ascertain their knowledge of legal matters more generally. The results show that participants were generally unaware of their legal rights and had difficulty comprehending the right to silence caution. Overall, the study demonstrates that while many participants reported understanding the QPS caution, the reality is that most did not. This is a concerning outcome considering that people already marginalised by virtue of lower education and literacy levels (many Indigenous Australians residing in Far North Queensland, for example) are further seriously disadvantaged by failing to comprehend the police caution.

Over recent years, I have engaged with mountains of media information dealing with the general subject of Global Warming and Climate Change and overall, the argument ‘for’ has been very convincing. So I pause at this point and own up to holding the view that the earth is indeed warming at an (alarmingly) accelerated pace, however I acknowledge this is by no means a universally shared perspective.

Given the negative relationships between statistics anxiety and statistics achievement, it is important for researchers and instructors to have a reliable and valid measure to identify students with statistics anxiety. The purpose of the current study was to examine the psychometric properties of Vigil-Colet, Lorenzo-Seva, and Condon's (2008) Statistical Anxiety Scale (SAS) among students in Singapore and Australia. Unlike the commonly used Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale, the SAS provides a specific measure of statistics anxiety. Participants were 197 undergraduates (79.2% female) in the James Cook University Psychology programs at the Singaporean (70.1%) and Australian (29.9 %) campuses. Acceptable internal consistency reliabilities, ranging from 0.88 to 0.95 for the three factors of the SAS, were found in the current study. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a modified three-factor model best describe the data. Scores on the SAS shared positive correlations with another measure of statistics anxiety, and negative correlations with a measure of attitudes toward statistics. The results provided support for the use of the SAS among Singaporean and Australian psychology undergraduates.

Homelessness is a complex problem affecting Australian Indigenous women disproportionately compared to the rest of the Australian population. Homelessness service providers in Cairns and Mount Isa, Australia, provided their perceptions as to why Indigenous women were presenting to homeless services. The key reasons cited by service providers were: domestic violence; alcohol and other drugs; and financial hardship. Other reasons included racist real estate agents; avoiding alcohol and family; overcrowding; literacy and numeracy skills; difficulty returning home and; not enough public housing. Potential solutions to help break this cycle of homelessness are explored. This research suggests that an important overall goal in reducing homelessness is to ensure that Indigenous women are safe at home in their own communities.

Homelessness is affecting Australian Indigenous women disproportionately in comparison with the Australian population. Homeless Indigenous women in Cairns and Mount Isa, Australia, were interviewed about their experiences of homelessness, understanding of causes and services available to them. Reasons for homelessness for the women interviewed circled around relationship breakdowns, patterns of repeated homelessness, lack of access to services in remote areas and lack of affordable housing. The need for affordable and safe housing, suitable to accommodate a variety of family groups, from single women to large families was a recurrent theme.

The extent to which fathers and mothers adopted various childcare and parenting practices in Singapore was examined. Interviews were conducted with 530 parent–child dyads (involving 1060 participants), with parents and children (from age 10–12) responding independently and concurrently in separate rooms. Mothers were more likely than fathers to be children's main and preferred caregivers. Fathers reported using less physical punishment than mothers did, and were also perceived to be less warm and accepting by their children. These findings support the view that power assertive discipline may still be compatible with warmth in parenting at least in this culture. In Confucian societies, parenting concepts involving elements of authoritarianism may be seen as a positive sign of concern.

This study examined how distrust towards an out-group believed to be an actor of a conspiracy theory moderates the role of Islamic identification, group incompatibility and competitive victimhood in explaining belief in said conspiracy. The contextual background we used to verify this idea is the belief in a conspiracy theory among Indonesian Muslims about the involvement of Western countries behind terrorism in Indonesia. More precisely, we found only among Muslim participants with high distrust towards Western people that Islamic identification and group incompatibility positively predicted the perception that Muslims, more than other religious groups, are the victim of the Western people and the belief in a theory that these people have conspired to create terrorism in Indonesia. We also hypothesized and found that competitive victimhood significantly mediated the effects of Islamic identification and group incompatibility on the belief in a conspiracy theory. However, in line with the prediction, these mediation roles of victimhood were obtained only among participants with high distrust. We discussed these findings with reference to theoretical and practical implications.

Comparing the healing experiences reported by members of indigenous dream groups such as the Senoi of Malaysia and others to those reported by members of American grassroots dream appreciation groups, and considering the views of previous researchers who have studied these groups, it is seen that there are many aspects of dream sharing in the community that have potential healing capacities. There are critics who claim that the lack of a professional group leader will put group members at risk. But problems can be avoided with proper communication, education, and appropriate dream group leadership. The experience of healing by dream sharing in community is qualitatively unique depending on the cultural context and worldview. There are many forms of dream sharing and healing that have been reported by those who have shared dreams in various world communities. In Western societies lack of interest, fear, and safety concerns have influenced the paucity of dream sharing. Many forms of dreamwork in groups have included both healing and education as potential goals. There is room for new ideas to be implemented and built upon that could creatively help nourish those parts of the world that are suffering from social and cultural dream-impoverishment.

A peer-reviewed Cambridge University Press online journal, the Journal of Tropical Psychology has this rationale: While there continues to be argument as to how much climate change is due to human or corporate events, there is no disagreement that the earth is becoming warmer, leading to a climate with more moisture in the air, stronger storms, flooding, and a great change for all the inhabitants of the earth, particularly our human cousins in ever more nations. To understand the psychology of our planetary future, we may access the psychologists of tropical climates who are already successful in their adaptation to a daily life in an environment we may all share eventually. To provide a vehicle for these psychologists can be a valuable service, particularly since psychological journal articles originating in Europe or the United States have long provided the bulk of scientific and professional publications. Yet there is very substantial psychological work being done in tropical zone countries and regions. A few national and regional journals like the Australia's Psychological Science or the regional online Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology are examples. A Journal of Tropical Psychology is specifically circum-global and unites the rapidly growing torrid climate-related nations around the earth in the development and sharing of their psychological discoveries.