God and free speech: A quaker perspective on the Satanic Verses controversy

This paper offers a Quaker perspective on the issues raised for British society by the Satanic Verses controversy. It is argued that the Quaker rejection of coercive power is founded upon the story of Jesus Christ. The origins of Quaker attitudes to free speech are located in seventeenth‐century Puritanism, arguing that Quakers share with Western secular defenders of free speech an internalization of the blasphemy taboo which issues in intolerance of anything held sacred. Furthermore, free speech rhetoric tends to ignore the power relations which sustain free speech in particular contexts. This is a neglect which, coupled with a secularized theory of race relations that ignores religious factors, renders its protagonists incapable of addressing anti‐Islamic prejudice, a phenomenon illustrated from press coverage of the controversy. The implications of this argument for British society and Quakers in particular are then considered. It is argued that an extension of legislation covering incitement to racial hatred to religion is the most appropriate legal response, but the greatest need is educational. Quakers and other Christian groups need to develop their own theological response to avoid passively replicating the dominant view in society.     

Muslim Canadians: Immigration policy and community development in the 1991 census

Canada's Muslim population is rapidly increasing. Initial immigration was hindered by the racist White Canada policy, discarded in 1962. Thereafter, Muslims from South Asia and the Middle East entered Canada in large numbers as professionals and trained workers, as well as substantial numbers of refugees. While the community is well‐integrated economically, in terms of job classification and educational involvement, Muslims face prejudice and discrimination because of their race and religion. The most important challenge is passing on religious and cultural traditions to offspring, not only since their socialization occurs in a secular environment but also because the higher levels of economic and educational success within the Muslim community tend to break down religious and cultural barriers to mixed marriages. While characteristics of Muslim social identity, such as esteem for education and caring for older relatives, are positive factors encouraging group adhesion, negative forces, such as racism, also contribute to group maintenance.     

Sometimes it does hurt to ask: The constructive role of articulating impressions

Decisions can sometimes have a constructive role, so that the act of, for example, choosing one option over another creates a preference for that option (e.g., , ,  and ). In this work we explore the constructive role of just articulating an impression, for a presented visual stimulus, as opposed to making a choice (specifically, the judgments we employ are affective evaluations). Using quantum probability theory, we outline a cognitive model formalizing such a constructive process. We predict a simple interaction, in relation to how a second image is evaluated, following the presentation of a first image, depending on whether there is a rating for the first image or not. The interaction predicted by the quantum model was confirmed across three experiments and a variety of control manipulations. The advantages of using quantum probability theory to model the present results, compared with existing models of sequence order effects in judgment (e.g., Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992) or other theories of constructive processes when a choice is made (e.g.,  and ) are discussed.     

Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists

Early Muslims wrote extensively about human nature and called it Ilm-al Nafsiat or self-knowledge. In many cases, their works seem to be the original ideas for many modern day psychological theories and practices. What is interesting however is that a lot of what the early scholars wrote was blended with Islamic philosophy and religious ideas. This paper covers major contributions of prominent early Muslim scholars to psychology and outlines the challenges faced by today's Muslims in adapting to the Western theories. It also offers a few recommendations on the indigenization of psychology for Muslim societies interested in seeking the Islamic perspective on human behaviors.     

The epistemological challenge to metanormative realism: how best to understand it,and how to cope with it

Metaethical—or, more generally, metanormative—realism faces a serious epistemological challenge. Realists owe us—very roughly speaking—an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative truths about which they are realists. This much is, it seems, uncontroversial among metaethicists, myself included. But this is as far as the agreement goes, for it is not clear—nor uncontroversial—how best to understand the challenge, what the best realist way of coping with it is, and how successful this attempt is. In this paper I try, first, to present the challenge in its strongest version, and second, to show how realists—indeed, robust realists—can cope with it. The strongest version of the challenge is, I argue, that of explaining the correlation between our normative beliefs and the independent normative truths. And I suggest an evolutionary explanation (of a pre-established harmony kind) as a way of solving it.     

Diversity in context: how organizational culture shapes reactions to workers with disabilities and others who are demographically different

Successfully integrating workers with disabilities into their organizations is both a challenge and an opportunity facing managers today. Despite laws and business practices prohibiting discrimination against those with disabilities, people with disabilities are consistently underutilized in organizations. This article applies theories of demographic diversity in organizations to assert that a richer understanding of organizational cultures and their implications for workers with disabilities may shed light on the question of how and why workers with disabilities may be excluded from mainstream work experiences and career progression. The article briefly reviews business arguments that support integration of workers with disabilities into organizations based on their contribution to the overall diversity within the organization, and reviews complications in the research on diversity to date that leave important questions of the potential gains or detriments from increasing this diversity unanswered. The article then goes on to introduce organizational culture as an underinvestigated but likely potent tool in explaining how and when workers who are demographically different, in general, and with disabilities, specifically, may be successfully integrated into an organization's work force. The article introduces three types of organizational culture: culture of differentiation, culture of unity, and culture of integration. Each is explained in terms of its content and its implications for managing diversity. A discussion of the implications of culture as a primary tool for managing the integration of workers with disabilities concludes the paper.     

Religious Commitment and its Relation to Happiness among Muslim Students: The Educational Level as Moderator

This study examines the relationship between religiosity and level of happiness in an Islamic context among Muslim students studying at Malaysian universities. The determinants of happiness included in this research are positive attitudes, self-esteem, and other-esteem. Religiosity has long been considered as the main determinant in increasing happiness, and educational level strengthens its relationship. For this purpose, the researchers sampled 230 Muslim students aged 17–40 years studying at Malaysian universities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The study found a positive and significant correlation between religious commitment and level of happiness. Religious commitment also shows positive and significant correlations with positive attitudes, self-esteem, and other-esteem. The study also concludes that educational attainment moderates the relationship between religious commitment and happiness. Thus, religious commitment plays a very important role in increasing levels of happiness.

     

International school psychology: psychology's worldwide portal to children and youth

International school psychology is discussed in reference to scholarly and professional development within psychology, the emergence of an international association of school psychology, its efforts to promote school psychology, prevailing characteristics of school psychologists, and additional efforts needed to further enhance its development. Nine issues that will help shape the future of international school psychology are also identified. The importance of psychology, including school psychology, in promoting children's needs and rights is underscored.     

The Muslim Community and Education in Quebec: Controversies and Mutual Adaptation

In this article, the author first deals with an overview of the socio-demographic characteristics of the Muslim community in Canada, especially in Quebec, and of its educational experiences in Quebec schools. She then analyzes in more depth three important controversies that have targeted the Muslim community in the last 20 years, respectively, regarding the teaching of Arabic at the end of the 1980s, the wearing of the Muslim veil in the mid-1990s and the wider reasonable accommodation debate, which did not specifically target it, in 2007–2008. In the third part based on a major survey of Quebec schools, she, nevertheless, argues that to some extent, these controversies have permitted to foster, to a certain degree, the adaptation of public schools to Muslim students’ needs.     

When hurt will not heal: exploring the capacity to relive social and physical pain

ABSTRACT— Recent discoveries suggest that social pain is as real and intense as physical pain, and that the social-pain system may have piggybacked on the brain structure that had evolved earlier for physical pain. The present study examined an important distinction between social and physical pain: Individuals can relive and reexperience social pain more easily and more intensely than physical pain. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people reported higher levels of pain after reliving a past socially painful event than after reliving a past physically painful event. Studies 3 and 4 found, in addition, that people performed worse on cognitively demanding tasks after they relived social rather than physical pain. Implications for research on social pain and theories about social pain are discussed.     

Religiosity and Self-Esteem of Muslim Immigrants to the United States: The Moderating Role of Perceived Discrimination

The present study investigated the moderating effect of perceived discrimination in a sample of Muslim immigrants (N = 174). Sex differences on perceived discrimination, religiosity, and self-esteem were examined. Results suggested a significant difference between Muslim men and women in regards to measures of religiosity. Men displayed higher religiosity scores. Results also indicated a significant positive relationship between measures of religiosity and perceived discrimination. Our results also provided full support for the moderating role of perceived discrimination. Implications of these findings for psychologists and future research examining these relationships are addressed.     

The psychological reactions to infertility: Sex roles and coping styles

The purpose of this study was to determine if sex roles would predict the extent to which people experience problems in coping with infertility. Based on questionnaire responses of 164 medical patients, it was found that patients scoring higher in masculinity or androgyny reported fewer problems in coping with infertility, as measured by self-esteem and body image. It was also found that groups of infertile, formerly infertile, and fertile patients were no different in levels of coping. It was suggested that physicians might be able to identify patients at risk for poorer coping with infertility by screening new referrals for self-esteem and historical-background variables.     

The Economic Ideas of Muslim Scholars and Christian Scholastics: Linkages and Parallels

This article discusses linkages and parallels between economic ideas of Muslim scholars and Christian scholastics with the objective of finding common ground in the history of the subject that may increase understanding of our traditions, boost cooperation and strengthen the bonds between our associations. It also aims to provide material that may counteract the divisive elements in the West-centric thesis that propagates the clash of civilizations. By way of introduction, it begins with an account of the contexts in which Muslim dialecticians and European scholastics emerged and the foundations on which they based their work. It then traces the links that brought them close to each other and presents a number of cases on which the two traditions have similar views. The article concludes with a note that ethics and human values were the overriding considerations of both scholastics and Islamic scholars, and that, in spite of enormous changes in economic principles and practices, this concern for humanity has not changed. If economics is enriched with these values, they will surely increase efficiency, justice and stability, leading to harmony and peaceful co-existence.     

The puzzle of transparency and how to solve it

ABSTRACT

According to the transparency approach, achievement of self-knowledge is a two-stage process: first, the subject arrives at the judgment ‘p’; second, the subject proceeds to the judgment ‘I believe that p.’ The puzzle of transparency is to understand why the transition from the first to the second judgment is rationally permissible. After revisiting the debate between Byrne and Boyle on this matter, I present a novel solution according to which the transition is rationally permissible in virtue of a justifying argument that begins from a premise referring to the mental utterance that is emitted in the course of judging ‘p.’     

The p-value fallacy and how to avoid it.

Null hypothesis significance tests are commonly used to provide a link between empirical evidence and theoretical interpretation. However, this strategy is prone to the "p-value fallacy" in which effects and interactions are classified as either "noise" or "real" based on whether the associated p value is greater or less than .05. This dichotomous classification can lead to dramatic misconstruals of the evidence provided by an experiment. For example, it is quite possible to have similar patterns of means that lead to entirely different patterns of significance, and one can easily find the same patterns of significance that are associated with completely different patterns of means. Describing data in terms of an inventory of significant and nonsignificant effects can thus completely misrepresent the results. An alternative analytical technique is to identify competing interpretations of the data and then use likelihood ratios to assess which interpretation provides the better account. Several different methods of calculating the likelihood ratios are illustrated. It is argued that this approach satisfies a principle of "graded evidence," according to which similar data should provide similar evidence.     

Exploring how people respond to conflicts between self‐interest and fairness: Influence of threats to the self on affective reactions to advantageous inequity

Two studies examined how people deal with conflicts between their self‐interest concerns and their striving for fairness. Specifically, the affective reactions to outcome arrangements in which people receive better outcomes than comparable other persons, were studied. These arrangements of advantageous inequity constitute situations in which fairness and self‐interest concerns are in conflict. Building on the social psychology of the self, it was predicted, and found, in both field and lab experiments that when people experience a self‐threat, they react more positively to arrangements of advantageous inequity than when not experiencing this threat. This supports the view that people's need for positive information about their selves is an important factor in the underlying psychological processes of the way that people deal with conflicts between their fairness and self‐interest concerns.