Tell Me What You Believe and I'll Tell You What You Want: Empirical Evidence for Discriminating Value Patterns of Five Types of Religiosity

On the basis of Wulff's (1997) theoretical model of religious attitudes and of Schwartz's (1992; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995) value theory, a refined theoretical framework has been constructed and empirically tested concerning the relation between 5 types of religiosity and personal value orientation. Two theoretical value patterns associated with religiosity were identified: A theological one focused on transcendence and mutual care, and a sociopsychological one focused on acceptance of social order and avoidance of uncertainty. Religious commitment and Hutsebaut's (1996) types of religious attitudes, which are based on Wulff's theoretical model, were, in a theoretically predicted and meaningful way, empirically related to a different value pattern. Moreover, each observed pattern could be explained as a specific combination of the 2 theoretically derived value patterns.     

Creative Actions Scale: A Spanish Scale of Creativity in Different Domains

This article introduces the Creative Actions Scale (CAS), a Spanish self‐report assessment of individual differences in creative actions. The CAS consists of independent scales that assess the frequency of engagement in everyday creative actions across seven domains: Literature, Plastic Arts and Crafts, Science and Technology, Scenic Arts, Music, Social Participation, and Everyday Creativity. The sample included 1604 men and women who lived in different provinces in Argentina. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 94 years. All of the participants spoke Spanish and had an average socioeconomic level. People with different levels of education were included in the sample. We applied the following data collection instruments: CAS, Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors, and Domains of Creativity Scale. The analysis provided evidence of internal consistency and validity of the CAS. The confirmatory factor analysis showed an adequate fit of the seven‐domain model. The results also showed significant differences according to gender in some CAS domains. Inclusion of the Social Participation and Everyday Creativity domains is novel and useful for assessing creativity in the Spanish‐speaking population.     

Tell Me a Story of Jesus: Teaching as Storytelling and Four Recent Short Histories of Christianity

Abstract. Offering a review of four short introductory books on Christianity, this essay discusses how introductory textbooks, and introductory religion courses more generally, are like storytelling. Books by Lindberg, Tomkins, Norris, and Woodhead are reviewed with an emphasis on their classroom use. These books share several things in common – most notably, each is a “short,” popular text. Dealing with the topic of Christianity in abbreviated form presents certain challenges and possibilities in the task of teaching. After examining these short histories, the essay reflects on several questions that emerge: When should we use textbooks in college classrooms? What are the goals that teachers have in the use of textbooks? How do textbooks define the subject matter of a course? And finally, how do teachers use texts to aid in telling a story in the classroom?     

"I Can Tell You If I'll Really Lose All That Weight": Dispositional and Situated Optimism as Predictors of Weight Loss Following a Group Intervention

Weight loss is difficult to achieve and predict. We used Carver & Scheier's (1998 ) self-regulation theory to investigate the role of dispositional and situated optimism in weight loss following a group intervention. The theory proposes that dispositional optimism is related to persistence in goal pursuit as a result of greater confidence in goal attainment. Findings showed that situated optimism (higher goals, greater confidence in their attainment) predicted greater weight loss; whereas dispositional optimism, perceptions of controllability, timeline, and consequences of the weight problem were unrelated to weight loss. Changes in situated optimism following the intervention were related to weight-loss success/failure. The findings suggest that people possess quite accurate knowledge of their chances of success, which could be used to tailor interventions to participants.     

“Tell Me How That Makes You Feel”: Philosophy's Reason/Emotion Divide and Epistemic Pushback in Philosophy Classrooms

Alison Bailey has recently explored the nature of what she calls privilege‐evasive epistemic pushback or “the variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when they are asked to consider both the lived experience and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience daily.” In this article, I want to use Bailey's argument to demonstrate how privilege‐evasive epistemic pushback is facilitated and obscured by the disciplinary tools of traditional Western philosophy. Specifically, through exploring philosophical cultures of justification and case studies, this work will reveal how students engage in privilege‐evasive epistemic pushback by deploying the reason/emotion divide and various philosophical norms and practices it underlies to protect their epistemic home turf. Then, I offer three emotion‐enhancing critical philosophical practices aimed at disrupting the ignorance‐promoting moves of privilege‐evasive epistemic pushback and, instead, engage emotion as epistemically significant.     

Testing Informant Discrepancies as Predictors of Early Adolescent Psychopathology: Why Difference Scores Cannot Tell You What You Want to Know and How Polynomial Regression May

Multiple informants commonly disagree when reporting child and family behavior. In many studies of informant discrepancies, researchers take the difference between two informants’ reports and seek to examine the link between this difference score and external constructs (e.g., child maladjustment). In this paper, we review two reasons why difference scores cannot serve as unambiguous predictors of outcomes. Further, we use polynomial regression analyses to both test the validity of difference scores and provide a more direct test of the hypothesis that discrepancies in parent and child reports predict child psychopathology. Data from 218 parent-adolescent dyads (M adolescent age?=?11.5 years, 51 % female; 49 % European American, 47 % African American) were used to predict adolescent-reported antisocial behavior and depression from parent and adolescent reports of parent-adolescent conflict, parental knowledge, parental acceptance, adolescent rule-breaking behavior, and adolescent pubertal development. Results demonstrate that analyses using difference scores do not provide valid tests of the utility of informant discrepancies in predicting adolescent psychosocial maladjustment. However, interaction terms in polynomial regression analyses provide evidence that informant discrepancies predict child psychopathology. Parent-adolescent informant discrepancies predict adolescent psychopathology but researchers should avoid using difference scores to measure informant discrepancies. Polynomial regression analyses provide more comprehensive and accurate tests of whether informant discrepancies predict child and adolescent psychopathology.     

In the Eye of the Beholder: Differences Across Ethnicity and Gender in Evaluating Creative Work

Creativity has been proposed as a supplement to ability tests as a way to reduce bias, as a result of the typical lack of ethnic or gender differences. Yet, creativity is usually measured through a consensus of rater judgment. Could there be implicit biases against people of different ethnicities or gender? This study examined stories and poems written by 205 students and rated by 108 different students. Females wrote poems that were judged to be more creative; there were no significant differences by ethnicity across all raters. Among notable findings, European Americans and African Americans both preferred stories written by European Americans. Reasons for this and other findings are discussed.     

Respect in Mengzi as a Concern-based Construal: How It Is Different from Desire and Behavioral Disposition

Previous scholars seem to assume that Mengzi’s 孟子 four sprouts are more or less homogeneous in nature, and the four sprouts are often viewed as some sort of desires for or instinctive inclinations toward virtues or virtuous acts. For example, Angus Graham interprets sìduān 四端 as “incipient moral impulses” to do what is morally good or right, or “spontaneous inclinations” toward virtues or moral good. However, this view is incompatible with the recently proposed more sound views that regard Mengzi’s four sprouts as a particular type of emotions or feelings having some “cognitive” or “rational” aspects. In this essay I develop this new approach to Mengzi’s four sprouts, and specifically argue that respect in Mengzi should be considered neither as a moral desire nor as a behavioral tendency to do deferential acts but as some sort of ethical sensibility that is responsive to the relevant features of a worthy person.     

Romantic Relationships at Work: Perceived Changes in Job-Related Behaviors as a Function of Participant's Motive, Partner's Motive, and Gender

It is frequently assumed that intimate relationships between members of the same organization inevitably prove harmful to organizational functioning. This paper challenges that assumption by examining the association between three motives for entering a relationship (love, ego, job) and four job-related behaviors. The data suggest that (a) although positive and negative changes in job-related behaviors do occur, they are generally small, and (b) they can be predicted, in part, by the motives for entering the relationship and, in part, by the gender of the relational participant.