Accuracy and Biases in Newlyweds' Perceptions of Each Other: Not Mutually Exclusive but Mutually Beneficial

ABSTRACT— There has been a long-standing debate about whether having accurate self-perceptions or holding positive illusions of self is more adaptive. This debate has recently expanded to consider the role of accuracy and bias of partner perceptions in romantic relationships. In the present study, we hypothesized that because accuracy, positivity bias, and similarity bias are likely to serve distinct functions in relationships, they should all make independent contributions to the prediction of marital satisfaction. In a sample of 288 newlywed couples, we tested this hypothesis by simultaneously modeling the actor effects and partner effects of accuracy, positivity bias, and similarity bias in predicting husbands' and wives' satisfaction. Findings across several perceptual domains suggest that all three perceptual indices independently predicted the perceiver's satisfaction. Accuracy and similarity bias, but not positivity bias, made unique contributions to the target's satisfaction. No sex differences were found.     

Evangelism and Popular Culture

This article reports on the work and the deliberations of the United Evangelical Mission's Working Group on Evangelism and Popular Culture. Working with rough heuristic categories, the group identifies Protestantism's discomfort with popular cultural expressions and finds it rooted in Protestant history and modernist cultural theory. Using a postmodernist approach that looks at ways of meaning making in popular culture, the group calls for theological discernment and the identification of the work of the Holy Spirit within popular cultural expressions. Following J. K. A. Smith, liturgies are identified as shaping human identities. Secular, thick liturgies are often far more influential than Christian thin practices. Popular culture is a mirror of groundbreaking social change, but classical Protestant churches still follow the organizational principles of the 19th century. The group argues that to evangelize within popular culture, these churches will have to change their shape and structures, becoming missional but not consumer‐driven.     

Philosophy of Science Between the Natural Sciences,the Social Sciences,and the Humanities: Introduction

This introduction provides a detailed summary of all papers of the special issue on the second conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science: GWP.2016.     

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences: Editorial Introduction

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences -     

Ideal Positions: 3D Sonography,Medical Visuality,Popular Culture

As digital technologies are integrated into medical environments, they continue to transform the experience of contemporary health care. Importantly, medicine is increasingly visual. In the history of sonography, visibility has played an important role in accessing fetal bodies for diagnostic and entertainment purposes. With the advent of three-dimensional (3D) rendering, sonography presents the fetus visually as already a child. The aesthetics of this process and the resulting imagery, made possible in digital networks, discloses important changes in the relationship between technology and biology, reproductive health and political debates, and biotechnology and culture.     

Naturalizing Myths of Aging: Reading Popular Culture

This essay blends distinct fields of study--namely semiotics, gerontology, geriatrics, and the critical analysis of dramatic and filmic comedy of the modern era--in a way that we hope sheds light on the perception of elders both in our cultural tradition and in our current society. By bringing to bear these disciplines on this issue, we attempt to expose one way that erroneous perceptions about the elderly--myths, if you will--are propagated. Why is it, for example, that the majority of Americans have generally negative attitudes towards elders and the aging process despite the fact that such stereotypes are all contradicted by reality (Palmore, 1990)? What is it that we fear--and perhaps loathe--when it comes to our aging ? And why are we so irrational about this topic? How do myths of aging originate? And whose agenda might they serve? Is there some effective way that these myths can be defused in the popular mind? The above are all problematic questions, some with potentially disturbing answers. Yet we believe that by beginning to understand the linguistic and perceptual mechanisms by which myths of aging come into existence, a crucial first step will be taken toward understanding the source and the scope of the myths themselves. Perhaps only then will we be, as a society, in a position to countermand these usually harmful and often destructive misconceptions about our elderly population.     

Harry Potter and Contemporary Magic: Fantasy Literature,Popular Culture,and the Representation of Religion

This article discusses the reasons for the religious reactions to the Harry Potter novels, arguing that the books contribute to, and reflect, the reconfiguration of religion in contemporary society. The article analyses the media qualities of fantasy literature and the specific representation of magic in the novels and argues that these aspects form an important part of the reasons for the religious reactions. Fantasy literature and other popular culture that represents and mediates religious expressions and phenomena actively contribute to the reconfiguration of, and communication about, religion in contemporary society and are thus of consequence for what we understand ‘religion’ to be in the study of religions.