Robert H. Shaffer: The Quintessential “Do-Gooder”

Robert H. Shaffer, a pioneering administrator, faculty member, and professional association leader, was interviewed about the early days of AACD (formerly APGA) and his contributions to the student affairs field.     

The Wild Patience of John Howard Yoder: “Outsiders” and the “Otherness of the Church”

Yoder offers a vision of particular dialogical communities that practice generous solidarity precisely through creative uses of conflict and a vulnerable receptivity to the “least of these” within the church and outside it. Few today offer as compelling a vision for pursuing justice and political engagements in heterogeneous societies. Yoder interprets the binding lordship of Christ as the opening of dialogical relations between the church and the world in which giving and receiving happens in both directions. Vulnerable relations with outsiders are integral to the otherness of the church. When this understanding of caritas is forgotten and unpractised, the church loses its otherness and assimilates to the violence of the world.     

“Double Trouble”: An Introduction

This piece sets the scene for the inaugural addresses by Rosi Braidotti and Selma Sevenhuijsen which follow and provides background information on the history of women's studies in the Netherlands.     

“Working model of the child interview”: Infant clinical status related to maternal perceptions

Parental perceptions and subjective experience of infants have long been considered important in clinical work with infants and families. Using three different samples of infants, we compare mothers' representations of their infants in clinically referred and nonreferred groups, using the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI). Twenty-four mothers of infants with failure to thrive (and 25 matched controls), 17 mothers of toddlers with sleep disorders (and 20 matched controls), and 13 mothers of infants seen in a general infant psychiatry clinic participated. Compared to their nonclinical counterparts, mothers of infants with clinical problems had representations of their infants that were significantly more likely to be classified distorted or disengaged. Infant gender, age, and birth order were independent of maternal classifications. We conclude that the WMCI is a useful structured interview to categorize mothers' perceptions and subjective experience of their infant and relationship with the infant. Mothers' WMCI classifications are associated with the clinical status of the infant. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

“Alkie,”“Frat Brother,” and “Jock”: Perceived Types of College Students and Stereotypes About Drinking1

Two studies assessed perceived types of college students and associated stereotypes about drinking. In the first study, 64 university students responded to an open‐ended probe asking them to list types of college students and then rated the amount of drinking done by each of a set of preselected types. In the second study, 236 students responded to the same open‐ended item and directly rated a set of types that had been revised based on Study 1 in terms of drinking and involvement in the academic and sociosexual collegiate subcultures. As hypothesized, consensual responses to the open‐ended probe reflected the college student culture. Also as hypothesized, types of students socially defined in terms of the sociosexual aspects of college (e.g., “fraternity boy”) were rated as likely to drink heavily, whereas types that were seen as being pulled away from college social life, through assumed involvement in academics (e.g., “brain/straight As”), were rated as drinking relatively little. Finally, rated sociosexual involvement was positively correlated, and academic involvement was negatively correlated, with perceived drinking, which supports a central assumption of the framework guiding the research.     

“Higher” and “lower”: Comparative and categorical interpretations by children

Three-, four-, and five-year-old children's categorical and comparative understanding of high and low were examined in two experiments. Categorical knowledge was assessed by presenting subjects with a single object at varying heights (from 0 to five feet above the ground), and asking if the object was high or low. Comparative understanding of the terms was assessed by showing children two objects at a time and asking which was higher or lower. We observed two patterns of performance in children's categorical treatments: younger children in particular defined disjoint categories for high and low such that they only labelled the extreme heights as high or low, and maintained that middle heights were neither high nor low. Older children defined either-or categories such that all heights were labelled either high or low. We also found that children who defined either-or categories made correct comparative judgments across the entire range of variation whereas children who defined disjoint categories could only judge which of two objects was higher if the objects were not low (at 0 and 1 feet) and which of the objects was lower if the objects were not high (at 4 and 5 feet). The results were interpreted as reflecting a lack of appreciation that the terms are interdefined as negations of each other, and were discussed in terms of the similar semantic-congruity effects found in adults.     

“No More” leads to “Want More,” but “No Less” leads to “Want Less”: Consumers' counterfactual thinking when faced with quantity restriction discounts

The current research examines the impact of point‐of‐purchase (POP) discounts on consumers' counterfactual thinking (CFT). Study 1 reveals that consumers tend to engage in upward CFT (what might have been better) rather than downward CFT (what might have been worse) in response to POP discounts. Study 2 shows that upward CFT depends on how the discount information is framed. A discount with a lower‐quantity restriction (e.g., “X % off if you buy at least Y items”) leads consumers to counterfactually wish to buy more, but a discount with an upper‐quantity restriction (“X % off – limit Y items per customer”) leads consumers to wish to buy less. Study participants in both conditions report they would buy the same POP‐suggested amount, but for completely opposite reasons. In Study 3, this convergence effect in purchase quantity disappears when the maximum and minimum restrictions are lifted, suggesting that quantity restrictions in POP discounts guide quantity decisions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On Abolishing “Death”: An Etymological Note

The distinction is made between two uses of the word “death,” specifically, your death (the death of the other) and my death (the death of the self). It makes (logical, epistemological and phenomenological) sense for me to speak of your death, but not for me to speak of my death—inasmuch as, by reasonable definition, I cannot possibly ever experience my death. Dying is experienceable—although one can never be certain. The word death is a perfectly good word for the demise of the other; the word omega is suggested to allude to that non-event (the cessation of the self) now routinely spoken of as “my death,”     

ECONOMY OF “INVISIBLE DEBT” AND ETHICS OF “RADICAL HOSPITALITY”: Toward a Paradigm Change of Hospitality from “Gift” to “Forgiveness”

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct a Christian theology of “hospitality” through a critical reading of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as through an in‐depth biblical and theological reflection on the ethics of hospitality. Out of this reconstructive investigation, I propose a new Christian ethics of hospitality as a radical kind. As a new paradigm, this radical hospitality is distinguished from other types in that it is no longer conceived on the model of “gift”. The new Christian ethics of hospitality is rather reconstructed on the model of “forgiveness” by critically appropriating the concept of “invisible debt” that lies between the hosting citizens and the migrants in the senses of “you owe us your presence” and “I owe you my security and success.” While the hospitality of the gift defines the relationship between the hosting citizens and the migrants as givers and givees, the new paradigm of hospitality identifies this relationship as between creditors and debtors. In this regard, a new Christian hospitality called for unto citizens of the hosting society is a radical kind that challenges them to transcend the creditor‐debtor consciousness.     

Naves and Nukes: John Ruskin as “Augustinian” Social Theorist?

John Milbank appropriates John Ruskin as part of his “Augustinian” tradition. Milbank's selective reading, however, omits Ruskin's fixed hierarchies as well as his acknowledgment of conflict in economic life. Neither of these ideas fits the social aesthetics of harmony and difference that Milbank claims is unique to Christian theology. While Milbank's strictly theoretical portrait of theology gains critical force from Ruskin's robust account of social practices and just exchange, Milbank lacks effective historical and institutional responses to the problems in Ruskin's corpus. This deficiency undermines Milbank's dichotomy between theology and secular reason.     

Identifying components of type-A behaviour: “toxic” and “non-toxic” achieving

Measures of the Type-A behaviour pattern (TABP) have generally failed to distinguish between different components of the construct, some of which may not constitute risk factors at all. Based on the responses of a total of 632 subjects, the present paper reports on the development of student and working adult questionnaires which comprise discrete and unambiguous indices of “toxic” and “non-toxic” behaviour. Both components reflect high achievement motivation, but in the toxic scale this is compounded by hostile competitiveness and impatience. The scales were related in predictable ways to other relevant indices of personality, and while the toxic factor was significantly associated with deterioration in health status during adaptation, the non-toxic factor conferred a protective effect.     

Effects of visual familiarity on “same” and “different” decision processes

An experiment was conducted in which subjects matched upper and lower case versions of well-known abbreviations, such as BBC and etc, and meaningless controls. “Same” RT showed a familiarity effect for upper case versions of abbreviations such as BBC and GPO, but not for the lower case versions bbc and gpo. The converse did not occur for abbreviations such as etc, which were thought to occur most frequently in lower case. The “different” RT was inhibited by familiarity, with pairs such as IBM GPO being classified less rapidly than their lower case versions or controls. These effects occurred for subjects instructed to report “No” for “same” displays and “Yes” for “different” displays as well as for subjects given a conventional decision-report assignment. Some implications of these results for an account of the manner in which familiarity affects graphemic comparison processes are considered.     

Discrimination of “W” and “V” shapes by goldfish

Goldfish were trained to discriminate between “W” and “V” shapes; different groups were trained with the shapes in different orientations. Transfer tests were given after training and the following conclusions were drawn. Animals learned to discriminate between the training shapes by detecting the difference in the number of points present in each; they learned the difference in the relative number of points rather than the absolute number present in each shape; the subjects transferred well to pairs of shapes bearing points facing in different directions from those on the training shapes; knobs were treated as practically equivalent to points; animals relied more heavily on differences at the tops of the shapes than on differences in the bottom halves.