Marriage as Covenant: Tradition as a Guide to Marriage Education in the Pastoral Context

Public sentiment and rhetoric in recent years have unleashed a maelstrom of discussion over the definition of marriage. The insights that arise from consulting tradition and understanding the development of marriage for Christians are fundamental for explicating the special place matrimony holds in Christianity. Marriage ministry, especially marriage education, must employ an integrated holistic approach that offers a balanced presentation of the social, personal, and spiritual dimensions of marriage. The purpose of this paper is to review Christian tradition in order to inform and guide a ministerial praxis.     

Multiple mentoring in academe: Developing the professorial network

Previous studies in business organizations have shown that mentoring provides numerous benefits for both individuals and organizations. Most of this mentoring research has been based on traditional, hierarchical mentor-protégé relationships in non-academic settings. We discuss why there is little empirical research on faculty mentoring and review changes in professors’ careers that necessitate a fresh look at this issue. We suggest that because of environmental changes, the traditional model of professors being guided throughout their careers by one primary mentor, usually the dissertation advisor, may no longer be realistic or desirable. Instead, professors may be better served by a portfolio of mentors (Baugh & Scandura, 1999; Higgins & Kram, 2001) who facilitate the protégé’s development of career competencies. Building on the work of intelligent careers (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1996), we examine how the career competencies of knowing why, how, and whom interact with learning demands to produce the need for faculty to develop multiple mentoring relationships across their academic career. We build on this conceptualization by considering the role of signaling of career competencies (Jones, 2002) in developing the professorial network, offering managerial implications in developing mentoring programs, and discussing avenues for future research.     

Associational ties in academe: Some male and female differences

Although a growing body of empirical research has examined discriminatory policies and psychological barriers to ascent for women, it has virtually ignored structural barriers. Noticeably absent are data regarding the social organization of collegial ties. An analysis of the collegial-friend relationships among academicians in this study indicates that female professors, especially unmarried, have fewer males in their collegial-friend networks than men. Whether by choice or exclusion, it is suggested that isolation from these informal collegial contacts leaves women at a professional disadvantage.I am indebted to the Manpower Research Program, Cornell University, which is funded by the Manpower Administration, U.S. Department of Labor (Institutional Grant No. 31-34-70-02), for making this study possible. Researchers undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. Therefore, points of view or opinions stated in this article do not necessarily represent the official position or policy of the Department of Labor. I am thankful to several of my colleagues, Joe Scimecca, John Stutz, and Sandra Peterson-Hardt, for their helpful criticisms in revising this paper for publication.     

From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant

This paper examines Kant's accounts of friendship and marriage, and argues for what can be called an ideal of "moral marriage" based on Kant's notion of moral friendship. After explaining why Kant values friendship so highly, it gives an account of the ways in which marriage falls far short, according to Kant, of what friendship has to offer. The paper then argues that many of Kant's reasons for finding marriage morally impoverished compared with friendship are wrong-headed. The paper further argues that a few of Kant's views about friendship are false. The main point is that, when we slightly revise Kant's account of friendship and jettison Kant's misguided notions about marriage, we see that marriages can aspire to much of the same moral richness as friendships. Finally, the paper argues that this friendship model of marriage does not obscure the important ways in which marriages and friendships differ.     

Sacrifice in a Supportive Marriage: Social Support as a Moderator Buffers the Negative Effects of Sacrifice in Marriage

There is a long and interesting history in the study of the positive and negative effects of sacrifice, but few researchers have focused on how one’s marital partner being the recipient of sacrifice may lead to different outcomes. Based on conservation of resources theory, we suggested that a partner’s social support could be a potential moderator between sacrifice and well-being. To examine our hypothesis, we invited 141 Taiwanese couples to participate in our study. As expected, we found that only for those individuals whose partners provided less social support to them, the more they sacrificed, the lower marital satisfaction and the higher depressive symptoms they reported. In contrast, this effect was not found for the context in which a partner provided more social support. In addition, the negative correlation between a partner’s sacrifice and one’s depressive symptoms became stronger when an individual provided more support to their sacrificing partner. Our findings highlight that the relationship between sacrifice and well-being are contingent upon context, and are particularly dependent on whether the recipient of sacrifice can provide a supportive relationship.     

Marriage and personality: a genetic analysis

There is substantial evidence that married people fare better than their unmarried peers on many life outcome variables. The authors asked whether self-selection might partially explain these benefits through genetic influences on personality contributing to propensity to marry. Using a population-based sample of 4,225 women and 2,869 men that included 2,527 complete twin pairs, the authors investigated the phenotypic associations between personality and propensity to marry, the heritability of propensity to marry, and the extent of genetic influence on the link between personality and propensity to marry. The results suggest that propensity to marry is heritable and that the phenotypic link between personality and propensity to marry is genetically influenced.     

Warning: Attending to a mask may be hazardous to your perception

Object substitution is a type of backward masking that occurs when a mask appears during visual search for a target. We tested the hypothesis that object substitution is an overwriting process triggered by attentional selection of the mask. Impeding attentional selection of a mask by embedding it in an array of distractors eliminated object substitution. Similarly, object substitution did not occur when the mask appeared in advance of the target and, therefore, could not capture attention during search for the target. However, masking was reinstated when the mask was revealed from background contours at the moment of target onset and could therefore capture attention during search. These observations demonstrate that attentional selection of the mask is a necessary step in this type of masking and suggest that object substitution is active overwriting of unattended information triggered by selection of other visual information at a nearby location.     

Marriage Counseling: A Christian Approach to Counseling Couples

An approach to marriage counseling aimed at Christian couples is described. The theoretical bases of the approach are cognitive behavioral therapy and structural and strategic marital therapies. Techniques are drawn from various schools of marriage therapy. Shared Christian values between counselor and clients are used to promote increased marital commitment, marital satisfaction, and personal spiritual growth. Marital satisfaction might be increased through helping the couple increase their intimacy, enhance their communication, improve their conflict management, and forgive each other for past and present hurts.     

Marriage at the Summit: Response to the Commentaries

This article serves as a response to the 13 commentaries on the target article, which introduced the suffocation model of marriage in America. This reply has four main sections. First, it presents an elaborated version of the suffocation model that was inspired by the commentaries. Second, it addresses three areas of significant disagreement that emerged as we digested the commentaries. Third, it examines the circumstances under which being instrumental for one's spouse's needs benefits the self. And fourth, it takes strides toward the development of a mathematically formal version of the suffocation model. It concludes with a discussion of the ways in which policymakers, clinicians, and individual Americans can capitalize upon the suffocation model to strengthen marriage and, in doing so, bolster personal well-being.     

Taking your place or matching your face: two paths to empathic embarrassment

Empathic responding may be elicited by different processes, depending on the available situational and affective cues. We investigated two such processes, perspective-taking and nonverbal mimicry. In Study 1, participants watched an embarrassed or unembarrassed confederate dancing to music while either remaining objective or engaging in perspective-taking. Both manipulations affected empathic embarrassment. Study 2 further examined the effects of targets' embarrassment displays and observers' prior experience with the situation upon spontaneous perspective-taking, expressive mimicry, and empathic embarrassment. Embarrassment displays increased mimicry, but also spontaneous perspective-taking and subsequent empathy. Prior experience moderated the effects of embarrassment displays on perspective-taking and empathy. Path analyses demonstrated that embarrassment displays exerted indirect effects on empathic embarrassment through both perspective-taking and mimicry. The results suggest that available affective and situational cues can activate different routes to empathy, and highlight the value of simultaneously investigating target- and observer-based sources of influence.     

Marriage in India: Clinical Issues

This article considers some of the common issues with which marital couples in India struggle. These issues arise from the way that Indian families are typically structured and the rules that govern family relationships. Ideas from the social constructionist and contextual approaches are suggested as helpful interventions.     

How to set up a counseling program in your church

Pastoral Psychology -     

Marriage Education in the Army: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial

Although earlier studies have demonstrated promising effects of relationship education for military couples, these studies have lacked random assignment. The current study evaluated the short-term effects of relationship education for Army couples in a randomized clinical trial at two sites (476 couples at Site 1 and 184 couples at Site 2). At both sites, participant satisfaction with the program was high. Intervention and control couples were compared on relative amounts of pre-intervention to post-intervention change. At Site 1, not all variables showed the predicted intervention effects, although we found significant and positive intervention effects for communication skills, confidence that the marriage can survive over the long haul, positive bonding between the partners, and satisfaction with sacrificing for the marriage or the partner. However, at Site 2, we found significant and positive intervention effects for communication skills only. Possible site differences as moderators of intervention effects are discussed.     

First impressions: making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face

People often draw trait inferences from the facial appearance of other people. We investigated the minimal conditions under which people make such inferences. In five experiments, each focusing on a specific trait judgment, we manipulated the exposure time of unfamiliar faces. Judgments made after a 100-ms exposure correlated highly with judgments made in the absence of time constraints, suggesting that this exposure time was sufficient for participants to form an impression. In fact, for all judgments-attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness, competence, and aggressiveness-increased exposure time did not significantly increase the correlations. When exposure time increased from 100 to 500 ms, participants' judgments became more negative, response times for judgments decreased, and confidence in judgments increased. When exposure time increased from 500 to 1,000 ms, trait judgments and response times did not change significantly (with one exception), but confidence increased for some of the judgments; this result suggests that additional time may simply boost confidence in judgments. However, increased exposure time led to more differentiated person impressions.     

Objective and Interpretive Approaches to Equality in Marriage

This article differentiates two ways of studying equality in marriage: as an objective entity or as a socially constructed interpretation. Objective and interpretive researchers adopt divergent stances toward defining, measuring, and explaining marital equalities and inequalities. However, they also employ similar terms and methods, as well as exhibit mutual concern over the moral implications of research. Consequently, scholars may study marital equality in somewhat similar ways but produce reports that vary along an objective–interpretive continuum.