Professionalism: A Competency Cluster Whose Time Has Come

Despite the burgeoning literature on professionalism in other health professions, psychology lags behind in the level of attention given to this core competency. In this article, we review definitions from other health professions and how they address professionalism. Next, we review how this competency evolved within health service psychology (HSP), and we propose a definition. We offer an approach for assessing professionalism within HSP. Consideration is given to strategies and methods for providing effective education and training in this multifaceted competency. Finally, recommendations are made for creating a culture of professionalism within HSP and honoring psychology’s social contract with multiple publics.     

Field Experiments in Religion: A Dream Whose Time Has Come

Field experiments offer powerful tests of causality in real‐world settings. They have high validity—both internal and external—and require smaller inferential leaps than observational or laboratory methods. Nonetheless, they are rarely applied to religion. This article advocates for the frequent use of field experiments in the study of religion. It reviews their methodological advantages, and it identifies various ways that religion can be incorporated into a field experiment design. It proposes multiple strategies for creating feasible, ethical religion field experiments as well as optimizing them. Ultimately, field experiments have the potential to transform the study of religion.     

Evidence-Based Ethical Problem Solving: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

This is an account of the evolution of ideas and the confluence of support and vision that has eventuated in the founding of the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics (JERHRE). Many factors have contributed to the creation of this rather atypical academic journal, including a scientific and administrative culture that finally saw the need for it, modern electronic technology, individuals across the world who were committed to somehow finding common ground between researchers and those charged with ethical oversight of research, a network of helpful colleagues, and a university whose administration gave moral support to the endeavor in a time of fiscal austerity. Perhaps equally important were the decisions to make JERHRE a nonprofit undertaking, to emphasize the implications of empirical research for specific best practices, to serve the educational needs of those concerned with human research, and to seek to stimulate the interest of students in gaining an evidence-based understanding of the research contexts in which they decide to work. This article explores the ‘chemistry’ that has made it possible to develop a somewhat unorthodox journal and set of related activities.     

Futility in Chronic Anorexia Nervosa: A Concept Whose Time Has Not Yet Come

Comparatively little scholarly attention has been given to the question of futility in chronic psychiatric disorders, with the exception of a small body of work on so-called end-stage anorexia nervosa (AN). A review of this literature provides the background for a critical examination of whether the concept of futility has any clinically meaningful, ethically justifiable, and legally defensible application to AN. In this article, the arguments for and against futility judgments in AN are analyzed with special emphasis on determinations of capacity in this serious mental illness. Parallels between the futility disputes in medical and psychiatric disorders, where applicable, will be drawn to further illuminate whether or not the concept that continued psychiatric treatment for AN is ever truly futile.     

Response Time and Temporal Order Judgement in Vision

Both response proportion and response time (RT) measures were obtained in a task requiring temporal order judgements (TOJ) of the illumination of two lights. The decrease in mean RT as the inter-stimulus interval increased enabled the deterministic decision rule for TOJ to be rejected. Although the data were not inconsistent with a decision process incorporating a threshold for temporal resolution, a model based on a random walk process accounted for important features of the data. The implications of these results for the commonly employed “perceived-order” method are discussed.     

The Re-creation of the World: Filming Faith

This essay is about the connection of two worlds: the world "out there," and the re-created world seen on screen and experienced through religious myth and ritual. It is about the similarity between the way films are constructed and the way religious practices are constructed. Film and religion each begin with space and time, but re-create both: Film does this through cinematography, mise-en-scene, and editing, while religions achieve this by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, through the telling of stories, and the gathering together of people focused on a common object, text, or image. The hypothesis here is that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed, and vice versa.     

The Idea of an Anglican Covenant: A Faith and Order Perspective

Recent Roman Catholic texts (Dominus Iesus, 2000, and Responsa, 2007) have raised the question of what kind of theological understanding enables Catholics to identify what constitutes a ‘proper’ church. This article addresses the same question with regard to both the Anglican Communion and its constituent member churches. It examines how the churches of the Anglican Communion understand their own ecclesial character at different levels (local, national/regional and worldwide), in relation above all to their professed belief in the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’. It considers some of the current ways in which Anglicans appear to regard themselves as ‘church’ and seeks to identify some historic questions concerning their ecclesiology. Against this background, the article shows how the need for something like a covenant has been urged for many years and asks whether this might provide a possible way forward at a time of crisis for the Anglican Communion.     

Gender Verification: A Term Whose Time has Come and Gone

The process of testing to determine gender in putatively female athletes was developed in order to prevent cheating, but has devolved instead into a clumsy mechanism for detecting disorders of sexual development (DSD’s). In over thirty years of compulsory testing, individuals with DSD’s have been stigmatized and some have been denied the right to compete, although frequently their condition provided no competitive advantage. More recent guidelines require testing only on a case-by-case basis; the South African runner Caster Semenya was the first major test of this policy, and her experience points to the need for a more sensitive and confidential process. In addition, her case dramatizes the inadequacy of the term “gender verification.” Gender identity is a complex entity and resists simple classification. Sports authorities may set guidelines for who can compete, but they should refrain from taking on themselves the authority to decide who is and who is not a female.