Michèlle Bal
Biographic Data
| ID | 3805007 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michèlle Bal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michèlle |
| FAMILY NAME | Bal |
| SIGNATURE | BAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2524-2191 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
How local stakeholders view the complex system underlying socioeconomic inequalities in health in the Netherlands - A group model building study
Introduction Socioeconomic inequalities in health remain a major public health concern. A complex systems perspective can help identify intervention opportunities beyond traditional health promotion strategies, which often focus on lifestyle behaviours. This study explores how experts, including individuals with lived experience of disadvantage, perceive the key dynamics within the complex system underlying socioeconomic health inequalities in th…
Transdisciplinary complexity science
The complex and contextual nature of sustainability challenges demands an approach that integrates quantitative complexity science with transdisciplinary approaches to create an integrated understanding of system change. We present a systematic literature analysis from an emerging field we term Transdisciplinary Complexity Science for Sustainability and derive best practices for how this research approach can foster learning and action for sustai…
Sustaining Heteronormativity in Marriage
Family members often cite broader societal discourses and norms when forcing Chinese queer people to engage in heterosexual marriage (referred to as HMQ; heterosexual marriage undertaken by Chinese queer people). It is unclear what these social norms entail and how the norms are maintained. This paper examines 89 Chinese newspaper articles to uncover the societal discourses driving families to pressure queer people into heterosexual marriage. We …
Unprecedented injustice
The Netherlands recently experienced a crisis in childcare benefits, leading to 'unprecedented injustice' for many parents falsely accused of defrauding the childcare benefit system. This crisis highlights multiple barriers in parents' ability to access childcare already evident prior to the crisis, including the far-reaching digitalisation of social policies and childcare benefits in particular. Digitalisation can make parents feel childcare ser…
Understanding educational inequalities in sports participation through structurally based resources and individual agency – a sequential mediation analysis
Educational inequalities in sports participation remain a public health issue in the Netherlands. Combining structurally based resources from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of capital with Amartya Sen's conceptualization of individual agency may offer new insights into the complex mechanisms that drive these inequalities. Specifically, we posited that the way individuals are able to exercise their agency within the structurally based economic, social, …
Testing conditionality with Bourdieu's capital theory
Although Bourdieu's capital theory emphasized that economic, social, and embodied cultural capital interact to shape health behavior, existing empirical research mainly considered separate associations of the three forms of capital. Our aim was to investigate if and how economic, social, and embodied cultural capital are conditional on each other in their associations with adults' diet and physical activity. Cross-sectional, self-reported data fr…
A fairway to fairness
Current energy justice literature has developed a strong empirical approach to describe how justice plays a role in energy transitions. We argue that the individual-level perception measures are insufficiently developed within this field, while they are vital for a successful just energy transition. Reviewing studies on how people (citizens, users or consumers) perceive fairness in the context of the energy transition, we first investigate how fa…
Solidarity and Social Justice in Contemporary Societies
(Un)deserving of work-life balance? A cross country investigation of people’s attitudes towards work-life balance arrangements for parents and childfree employees
Work-life balance (WLB) represents a fundamental part of people’s well-being and is a key policy priority at national and organizational levels in many industrialized countries. Yet a significant gap exists in our understanding of employees’ ability to use WLB arrangements, particularly employees without children. We address this gap by exploring the perceived deservingness of childfree employees to use WLB arrangements in Italy and the Netherlan…
Social Inequality and Solidarity in Times of Covid-19
The enormous public health burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic are not distributed equally. Inequalities are noticeable along socio-economic and socio-cultural fault lines. These social determinants of health affect both the prevalence and severity of COVID-19 infections as well as the magnitude of negative impacts of the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus. This perspective paper summarizes key inequalities in who is affected by SARS-CoV…
Socioeconomic inequalities in health behaviors
Time orientation followed by material conditions may play a role in determining socioeconomic inequalities in certain health behavior-related outcomes, providing empirical support for the interplay between structural and individual factors in socioeconomic inequalities in health behavior. Smoking may be determined by prior smoking behavior regardless of SEP, potentially due to its addictive nature. While intervening on time orientation in adultho…
Reducing health disparities
Improving testing uptake among men who have sex with men with a non-western migration background (MSM-NW) is a public health priority, as people who are unaware of their HIV infection are at higher risk of transmitting HIV and are unable to benefit from HIV treatment. Formative semi-structured interviews with 13 MSM-NW assessed key factors for the successful implementation of social network testing with HIV self-tests (SNT-HIVST). Interviews were…
Putting the "I" and "Us" in Justice
Reactions toward innocent victims can range from harsh derogatory reactions to great effort to alleviate the victims' ill fates. Using insights from research on justworld theory and perspective taking, the current paper investigates both negative and positive reactions toward innocent victims. Specifically, we propose that self-focused versus other-focused motives can evoke derogatory versus more benevolent reactions, respectively, toward innocen…
On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World
Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of thi…
The role of perpetrator similarity in reactions toward innocent victims
Building and extending on just world theory, this paper studies people's negative reactions to innocent victims of rape or sexual assault. Specifically, we focus on an as yet unexplored variable that may help to explain these reactions, namely whether the perpetrator of the crime was similar or dissimilar to people who observed what happened to the victim. Perpetrator similarity refers to whether the perpetrator belongs to the personal world of t…
A fairway to fairness
Current energy justice literature has developed a strong empirical approach to describe how justice plays a role in energy transitions. We argue that the individual-level perception measures are insufficiently developed within this field, while they are vital for a successful just energy transition. Reviewing studies on how people (citizens, users or consumers) perceive fairness in the context of the energy transition, we first investigate how fa…
The role of perpetrator similarity in reactions toward innocent victims
Building and extending on just world theory, this paper studies people's negative reactions to innocent victims of rape or sexual assault. Specifically, we focus on an as yet unexplored variable that may help to explain these reactions, namely whether the perpetrator of the crime was similar or dissimilar to people who observed what happened to the victim. Perpetrator similarity refers to whether the perpetrator belongs to the personal world of t…
Unprecedented injustice
The Netherlands recently experienced a crisis in childcare benefits, leading to 'unprecedented injustice' for many parents falsely accused of defrauding the childcare benefit system. This crisis highlights multiple barriers in parents' ability to access childcare already evident prior to the crisis, including the far-reaching digitalisation of social policies and childcare benefits in particular. Digitalisation can make parents feel childcare ser…
Sustaining Heteronormativity in Marriage
Family members often cite broader societal discourses and norms when forcing Chinese queer people to engage in heterosexual marriage (referred to as HMQ; heterosexual marriage undertaken by Chinese queer people). It is unclear what these social norms entail and how the norms are maintained. This paper examines 89 Chinese newspaper articles to uncover the societal discourses driving families to pressure queer people into heterosexual marriage. We …
Putting the "I" and "Us" in Justice
Reactions toward innocent victims can range from harsh derogatory reactions to great effort to alleviate the victims' ill fates. Using insights from research on justworld theory and perspective taking, the current paper investigates both negative and positive reactions toward innocent victims. Specifically, we propose that self-focused versus other-focused motives can evoke derogatory versus more benevolent reactions, respectively, toward innocen…
On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World
Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of thi…
The role of perpetrator similarity in reactions toward innocent victims
Building and extending on just world theory, this paper studies people's negative reactions to innocent victims of rape or sexual assault. Specifically, we focus on an as yet unexplored variable that may help to explain these reactions, namely whether the perpetrator of the crime was similar or dissimilar to people who observed what happened to the victim. Perpetrator similarity refers to whether the perpetrator belongs to the personal world of t…
On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World
Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of thi…
Putting the "I" and "Us" in Justice
Reactions toward innocent victims can range from harsh derogatory reactions to great effort to alleviate the victims' ill fates. Using insights from research on justworld theory and perspective taking, the current paper investigates both negative and positive reactions toward innocent victims. Specifically, we propose that self-focused versus other-focused motives can evoke derogatory versus more benevolent reactions, respectively, toward innocen…
Reducing health disparities
Improving testing uptake among men who have sex with men with a non-western migration background (MSM-NW) is a public health priority, as people who are unaware of their HIV infection are at higher risk of transmitting HIV and are unable to benefit from HIV treatment. Formative semi-structured interviews with 13 MSM-NW assessed key factors for the successful implementation of social network testing with HIV self-tests (SNT-HIVST). Interviews were…
Social Inequality and Solidarity in Times of Covid-19
The enormous public health burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic are not distributed equally. Inequalities are noticeable along socio-economic and socio-cultural fault lines. These social determinants of health affect both the prevalence and severity of COVID-19 infections as well as the magnitude of negative impacts of the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus. This perspective paper summarizes key inequalities in who is affected by SARS-CoV…
Socioeconomic inequalities in health behaviors
Time orientation followed by material conditions may play a role in determining socioeconomic inequalities in certain health behavior-related outcomes, providing empirical support for the interplay between structural and individual factors in socioeconomic inequalities in health behavior. Smoking may be determined by prior smoking behavior regardless of SEP, potentially due to its addictive nature. While intervening on time orientation in adultho…
Solidarity and Social Justice in Contemporary Societies
(Un)deserving of work-life balance? A cross country investigation of people’s attitudes towards work-life balance arrangements for parents and childfree employees
Work-life balance (WLB) represents a fundamental part of people’s well-being and is a key policy priority at national and organizational levels in many industrialized countries. Yet a significant gap exists in our understanding of employees’ ability to use WLB arrangements, particularly employees without children. We address this gap by exploring the perceived deservingness of childfree employees to use WLB arrangements in Italy and the Netherlan…
Testing conditionality with Bourdieu's capital theory
Although Bourdieu's capital theory emphasized that economic, social, and embodied cultural capital interact to shape health behavior, existing empirical research mainly considered separate associations of the three forms of capital. Our aim was to investigate if and how economic, social, and embodied cultural capital are conditional on each other in their associations with adults' diet and physical activity. Cross-sectional, self-reported data fr…
A fairway to fairness
Current energy justice literature has developed a strong empirical approach to describe how justice plays a role in energy transitions. We argue that the individual-level perception measures are insufficiently developed within this field, while they are vital for a successful just energy transition. Reviewing studies on how people (citizens, users or consumers) perceive fairness in the context of the energy transition, we first investigate how fa…
Understanding educational inequalities in sports participation through structurally based resources and individual agency – a sequential mediation analysis
Educational inequalities in sports participation remain a public health issue in the Netherlands. Combining structurally based resources from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of capital with Amartya Sen's conceptualization of individual agency may offer new insights into the complex mechanisms that drive these inequalities. Specifically, we posited that the way individuals are able to exercise their agency within the structurally based economic, social, …
Transdisciplinary complexity science
The complex and contextual nature of sustainability challenges demands an approach that integrates quantitative complexity science with transdisciplinary approaches to create an integrated understanding of system change. We present a systematic literature analysis from an emerging field we term Transdisciplinary Complexity Science for Sustainability and derive best practices for how this research approach can foster learning and action for sustai…
Sustaining Heteronormativity in Marriage
Family members often cite broader societal discourses and norms when forcing Chinese queer people to engage in heterosexual marriage (referred to as HMQ; heterosexual marriage undertaken by Chinese queer people). It is unclear what these social norms entail and how the norms are maintained. This paper examines 89 Chinese newspaper articles to uncover the societal discourses driving families to pressure queer people into heterosexual marriage. We …
Unprecedented injustice
The Netherlands recently experienced a crisis in childcare benefits, leading to 'unprecedented injustice' for many parents falsely accused of defrauding the childcare benefit system. This crisis highlights multiple barriers in parents' ability to access childcare already evident prior to the crisis, including the far-reaching digitalisation of social policies and childcare benefits in particular. Digitalisation can make parents feel childcare ser…
How local stakeholders view the complex system underlying socioeconomic inequalities in health in the Netherlands - A group model building study
Introduction Socioeconomic inequalities in health remain a major public health concern. A complex systems perspective can help identify intervention opportunities beyond traditional health promotion strategies, which often focus on lifestyle behaviours. This study explores how experts, including individuals with lived experience of disadvantage, perceive the key dynamics within the complex system underlying socioeconomic health inequalities in th…
Psychology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Inequality (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Criminology (4 works) · Economics (4 works)