A Comparative Study of Mystical Experience Among Christian,Muslim, and Hindu Students in Tamil Nadu,India

Hood developed a Mysticism Scale based on the theoretical work of Stace. The scale was tested by Hood and others in a comparative perspective. Using an abridged version of Hood's Mysticism Scale, we join the debate with a study of a much larger number of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu respondents (1,920 college students) living in Tamil Nadu, India. Our empirical analysis yields a moderately reliable model of mystical experience that permits comparison between the three religious traditions. We argue for the usefulness of a comparative model of vertical mysticism that combines with the complementary common characteristics of noetic quality and ineffability. Vertical mysticism has a revelatory, ineffable character and is comparable in the experience of adherents of the Christian, Islamic, and Hindu traditions.     

印度泰米尔纳杜邦马默勒布勒姆海岸神庙遗址

正~~     

Essentialism,Culture, and Beliefs About Gender Among the Aravanis of Tamil Nadu,India

The purpose of this study was to investigate the gender beliefs of the Aravanis, a transgender community in Tamil Nadu. Gender transgression and gender transformation (attempts to change gender) tasks were used to examine the essentialist notions of the Aravanis' beliefs about gender. A total of 100 Aravanis participated in the study. In the gender transgression task the Aravanis endorsed both male and female gender transgressions. In the gender transformation task the Aravanis believed in the male to female transformation but not in the female to male transformation. I argue that the asymmetry in the Aravanis' responses suggests that their beliefs about gender are consistent with Hindu patriarchal beliefs that feminine gender is essential and primordial, whereas masculine gender transformations are viewed as part of the male prerogative. The marginalized gender experience of the Aravanis influenced their judgments about gender transgressions but not their beliefs about gender transformations. I also discuss the implications of a cultural psychology of gender.     

Toward an Anthropology of Exchange in Tamil Nadu

This article is an attempt to present the cultural conceptions of exchange that appear in studies of medieval South Indian redistributive processes and the anthropology of Tamil caste, kinship, and marital transactions. As such it does not engage theological understandings of gifts to and from South Indian deities. The approach is sociological, and the argument is that whether the mode is redistributive or donative, Tamil exchanges create social relationships that are embedded in meanings of distinction and precedence. What is handed out is a position in a social order that is first and foremost hierarchical, a rank in a social sequence, so that not merely things and services but social distinctions move through the social landscape.     

Metaphors that communicate weight-based stigma in political news: A case study of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

IntroductionNews media use metaphors to describe politics (Landau & Keefer, 2014) and obesity (Barry, Brescoll, Brownell, & Schlesinger, 2009). Weight-based stigma is prevalent in U.S. news media (Heuer, McClure, & Puhl, 2011). Media coverage of politicians’ body size may contain metaphors that stigmatize weight. Metaphors reflect and shape how people think about important issues like politics or obesity (Landau, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2009; Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010; Landau & Keefer, 2014).ObjectiveThis study uses stigma communication theory (Smith, 2007) to examine stigmatizing metaphors used in media coverage of a United States politician, and candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Republican.MethodWe coded n = 240 articles, from January 2011 to December 2014, that referenced Christie's weight. Considering both the articles and the comments in response to them, we identified n = 246 weight references that utilized metaphors and coded these using categories derived from the stigma communication theory framework.ResultsOur coding of these weight references, from journalists and comments posted by the public, demonstrated that metaphors accomplish all four functions of stigma communication: they mark, label, assign personal responsibility, and link to peril the stigmatized person.ConclusionOur findings demonstrate not only that news media use metaphors to describe a politician's weight, but also show how these metaphors — alone and together — function to constitute stigma communication messages. These messages can affect public opinions toward politics and obesity.     

Human-machine interaction: A case study on fake news detection using a backtracking based on a cognitive system

Although the Internet provides a variety of news, it also can give confusion caused by personal subjective thoughts such as personal TV, blogs, and unproven news. The unproven news is written in a subjective direction with added personal opinions rather than objective content, so readers may acquire knowledge with the wrong outlook. In addition, fake news is being produced and the problem of social polarization is becoming serious. In the end, it is necessary to detect the fake news, but it is not easy to distinguish the truth of published news because of the lack of fake news distinction time compared to the speed of information sharing on the Internet and the diversity and strong subjectivity of news. Therefore, in this paper, the possibility of fake news is defined by using the reverse-tracking method of the articles which are posted on the Cognitive System. Finally, as the result, the detection rate is average 85%.     

Caste,class and culture: A case study

This case study is concerned with the deteriorating relationship between an Indian doctor who comes from a wealthy, high-caste Brahmin family from Calcutta, and an English girl from a middle-upper-middle class family from Dorset. She is a graduate in English and is a “budding” novelist. They have known each other for several years and have often lived together. Despite the fact that they have decided to become engaged, and are planning to get married shortly, their relationship has turned sour, and she has walked out on him. The study examines the nature of their relationship, the irreconcilable cultural differences that separate them. The case is viewed almost entirely from the doctor's perspective because of her unwillingness to meet with him.     

Lower income Hindu women's attitude towards abortion: a case study in urban India

After a brief discussion of Hindu views on abortion as reflected in classical Hindu philosophical and religious texts, this article examines, from an interdisciplinary perspective, current social attitudes towards abortion among lower-income Hindu women in Calcutta and attempts to identify the reasons for the striking disparity between traditional and modern Hindu views. Does Hindu dharma have the regulatory power it wielded in the past? What accounts for the changing face of mores in urban centers like Calcutta? These and related issues are the focus of this essay.     

Neuromarketing in predicting voting behavior: A case of National elections in India

Political choice has huge importance, either expressed in the balloting place or in the exit poll, in bringing a political party to power and thus impacting the economy and society's welfare. Research in leadership and decision-making suggests that the physical characteristics and traits of an individual influence the consumer's trustworthiness. Despite being a less explored research area, studying the impact of specific verbal and non-verbal cues of a political leader through a technological lens, such as eye-tracking has been sparsely talked about. Three sets of experiments were conducted to study voters' visual attention and reactions to gage their willingness to vote. First, an eye-tracking tool was used to record the visual attention and regions of interest (ROI) of voters. Subsequently, a short survey was used to analyze the “willingness to vote”, followed by a pilot study on their attention to non-verbal cues from the candidate. Also, a sentiment analysis of the voters was gathered from social media platforms. The present study analyzed the non-verbal aspects of a political leader with regard to voting intention and found that even a few of the non-verbal cues have an influence on the willingness to vote for a candidate. The findings contribute to the literature of neuro-politics and decision-making by analyzing voters' experiences of two political leaders, Narendra Modi (NaMo) and Rahul Gandhi (RaGa) based on non-verbal cues. Political parties and candidates should focus on non-verbal cues to increase their chances of winning elections. In addition, practitioners from the industry should incorporate appropriate non-verbal cues while designing ad campaigns, personal branding, PR campaigns, and CEO addresses.     

Sibling loss, guilt and reparation: A case study

Psychoanalysis has shown that the death of a sibling is likely to have a long-standing impact on the character development of a surviving child. Among common adult manifestations are the identifi cation with the deceased sibling, repetitive self-punitive behaviors, and the development of masochistic trends. In treatment, these patients can become entrenched in a negative therapeutic reaction that compromises the outcome of their analysis. In this paper, the author discusses the analysis of a woman with a history of losses that included the loss of a sibling at an early age. A critical part of the treatment focused on helping this patient overcome a negative therapeutic reaction that emerged as she became aware of hostile and vengeful fantasies, not only as they related to her deceased brother but, more importantly, as they related to her parents.     

A journey in pastoral care: A case study

What is pastoral care? Many health professionals are not clear about the role of the chaplain on the health care team. This article addresses the question by using an actual case study to demonstrate how the chaplain interacts with the patient and the value of this interaction to the well-being of the patient. It attempts to define, by example, pastoral care.     

Reporting an experiment: A case study in leveling,sharpening, and assimilation

A survey of a number of social psychology books reveals glaring errors in the reporting of the findings in the now classic experiment by Schachter on deviation and rejection. Authors all too frequently have assimilated and sharpened their summaries of this study to a general theme, omitting important details inconsistent with their theme, and also misrepresenting the results in important ways. The tendency to reject opinion deviates may not be as strong as is commonly supposed in social psychology texts and clearly is a far more complicated phenomenon than social psychologist typically indicate to their readers and students.     

Visual imagery: A case study

This paper describes the performance of a subject who, when presented with a word or a sentence, is abnormally proficient at spelling this material in reverse order. She reports that she does this by visualizing this material and reading off from this visual image. Her tachistoscopic performance is also abnormally good. It is suggested that her superiority in these two tasks is achieved principally because her internal visual representations are extremely resistant to disruption by other mental activities.     

Convergent methodologies in cyber-psychology: A case study

“On-line communities” (and especially MUDs—“multiuser domains”) are a popular, growing Internet phenomenon. This paper provides an overview of a project designed to provide a careful characterization of what “life” is like in LambdaMOO—a classic social MUD—for most, or at least many, members. A “convergent-methodologies” approach embracing qualitative and quantitative, subjective and objective methods was used to generate a large and rich database on this on-line community in terms of four general categories: (1) users and use, (2) sociality, (3) identity, and (4) spatiality. The evidence thus far appears to debunk some of the more provocative claims of widespread MUD addiction and rampant identity fragmentation on line. While supporting the primary importance of sociality in the MUD, the results also demonstrate the strong prevalence of personal, one-on-one social interactions over larger social gatherings. Finally, some close correspondences between patterns of spatial behavior and spatial cognition “in real life” and in LambdaMOO were found.     

Remembered work importance,satisfaction, reminiscence and adjustment in retirement: A case study

Previous research on the relationship between adjustment to retirement and variables related to pre-retirement occupation has been inconclusive with reviewers calling for investigations which take individual dafferences into account, This case study examined the relationship between remembered importance of and satisfaction with occupation, reminiscence about working life and adjustment to retirement in the life of Mr Howard, a 70 year old ex-manager, Quantitative and qualitative analyses attentive to the importance of individual characteristics produced findings consistent with previous research suggesting that intrinsic occupational factors are important earlier on in working life but are replaced by extrinsic factors later in life. Mr Howard reported however, that this change was a reaction to external changes (organizational change due to nationalization) rather than a purely psychological process. He was fairly satisfied with life in general and retirement in particular and reminisced about working life sometimes on his own or with ex-workmates. These findings and the implications of single-case methodology are discussed.     

Formal paraphasias: A single case study

A case study is reported of an aphasic patient, RB, who showed frequent form-related whole-word substitutions in oral naming, writing to dictation, and reading aloud. In both written language tasks, the abstractness of the targets influenced the number of formal errors. In oral naming, a high proportion of formal paraphasias was related to the intended words in both form and meaning. A comparison between targets and formal paraphasias indicated a high agreement both in word class, number of syllables, stress pattern, and in basic (stressed) vowels. The agreement in consonants (including word-initial consonants), however, was low. It is argued that RB's formal substitutions are not caused solely by errors of lexical selection but that semantic, lexical, and segmental factors contribute to the error outcome.