The relationship between perceived religious discrimination and self‐esteem for Muslim Australians

Muslim Australians represent one of the fastest growing migrant groups in Australia. They are also the group who, after Indigenous Australians, experience the most discrimination. Previous research on the minority stress model confirms a link between such discrimination and mental health. However, in relation to self‐esteem and discrimination, the results are mixed, potentially reflecting whether people reject or identify with prejudiced views of them and also the type of discrimination being measured. To explore this issue further in an Australian context, we asked 49 Australian Muslims to complete Rosenberg's Self‐esteem Scale and the Perceived Religious Discrimination Scale. In support of both the minority stress model and the rejection‐identification model, we found that perceived interpersonal and systemic discrimination accounts for a small but significant variation in self‐esteem. Interpersonal discrimination was negatively related to self‐esteem, and systemic discrimination positively related. The effects of interpersonal discrimination on self‐esteem can guide therapists to interventions that help clients resist internalising discrimination experiences. The effects of institutional discrimination support therapists becoming part of the resistance to and challenging of discrimination and inequality.     

Interpreting idioms

Immediate comprehension processes involved in the interpretation of idiomatic expressions were investigate. Idioms like bury the hatchet were used in sentential contexts that (1) biased the listener toward a literal interpretation, (2) biased the listener toward a figurative interpretation, or (3) left the interpretation ambiguous between the literal and figurative readings. In control sentences, the final words of the idioms were used in nonidiomatic expressions. Listeners monitored the sentences for specified targets. In all cases, the target words were the final words of the idiomatic phrases. The listeners were instructed to detect words that were identical to cue words, that rhymed with the cue words, or that were members of semantic categories specified by cue words. Thus, hatchet was cued with either hatchet, ratchet, or a tool. Reaction-time latencies from the onset of the targets to the listeners' responses were obtained. Identity, Rhyme, and Category matches were detected more rapidly in all three idiomatic contexts than in the nonidiomatic controls. These results suggest that idioms are automatically processed as discrete lexical entries, and that previously observed reaction time advantages for figurative expressions may reflect integrative processes rather than retrieval of meaning.This research was supported by PHS Training Grant T32 MH 15134-02 from the National Institute of Mental Health. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 1981.     

Interpreting delusions

This paper explores the phenomenology of the Capgras and Cotard delusions. The former is generally characterised as the belief that relatives or friends have been replaced by impostors, and the latter as the conviction that one is dead or has ceased to exist. A commonly reported feature of these delusions is an experienced 'defamiliarisation' or even 'derealisation' of things, which is associated with an absence or distortion of affect. I suggest that the importance attributed to affect by current explanations of delusional experience can serve to make explicit the manner in which we ordinarily experience the world under a taken-for-granted aspect of affective familiarity. This implicit feeling is, I argue, partly constitutive of our sense of reality. However, so-called 'folk psychology,' which is generally adopted by philosophers as an initial interpretive backdrop for delusional beliefs and for beliefs more generally, fails to accommodate it. As a consequence, some pervasive philosophical assumptions concerning the manner in which we experience and understand the world, ourselves, and each other are called into question.     

Interpreting conjunctions

The interpretation generated from a sentence of the form P and Q can often be different to that generated by Q and P, despite the fact that and has a symmetric truth-conditional meaning. We experimentally investigated to what extent this difference in meaning is due to the connective and and to what extent it is due to order of mention of the events in the sentence. In three experiments, we collected interpretations of sentences in which we varied the presence of the conjunction, the order of mention of the events, and the type of relation holding between the events (temporally vs. causally related events). The results indicated that the effect of using a conjunction was dependent on the discourse relation between the events. Our findings contradict a narrative marker theory of and, but provide partial support for a single-unit theory derived from Carston (2002). The results are discussed in terms of conjunction processing and implicatures of temporal order.     

The religious physician

In order to understand what it means to be a physician, we must, according to Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, analyze four words that capture the essence of the medical enterprise: profession, patient, compassion, and consent. The resultant model provides a rational and secular basis upon which the Jewish or Christian physician can then build an understanding of medicine in its peculiarly religious form. This religious form is likewise characterized by four words: vocation, neighbor, love, and covenant. An analysis of these words provides a model of and for the religious physician.     

Understanding religious behavior

The attached (to mother) fetus-infant finds his religious expression in Buddhism. The attached (to group) juvenile finds his religious expression in Judaism and other tribalisms. The attached (to spouse) adult finds his religious expression in agnosticism and secularism. Attached phases are placid and of progressively decreasing emotional intensity. The three detaching phases are hurtful and hence soteriological, and are also of progressively decreasing emotional intensity. The toddler-young child finds his religious expression in Christianity, the adolescent in atheism and/or Marxism, and the aged, sick or dying plucks at any religious or secular aid.He has written numerous papers on aspects of child care, medical history, interrelations between medicine and religion, and between Judaism and Christianity.     

Interpreting conjunctions

The interpretation generated from a sentence of the form P and Q can often be different to that generated by Q and P, despite the fact that and has a symmetric truth-conditional meaning. We experimentally investigated to what extent this difference in meaning is due to the connective and and to what extent it is due to order of mention of the events in the sentence. In three experiments, we collected interpretations of sentences in which we varied the presence of the conjunction, the order of mention of the events, and the type of relation holding between the events (temporally vs. causally related events). The results indicated that the effect of using a conjunction was dependent on the discourse relation between the events. Our findings contradict a narrative marker theory of and, but provide partial support for a single-unit theory derived from Carston (2002). The results are discussed in terms of conjunction processing and implicatures of temporal order.     

Interpreting quantification

Alternative readings of quantification are considered. The absence of an unequivocal translation into ordinary speech is noted. Some examples are cited which, in the opinion of the author, are a result of equivocal readings of quantification, or unnecessarily restrictive readings which obscure its primary function.     

Authoritarianism and religious identification: Response to threats on religious beliefs

The present study illustrates the impact of threat and authoritarianism on individuals and their respective belief systems within a Christian framework. Participants completed Altemeyer's Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale, the Religious Fundamentalism Scale, the Questions and Doubts about Religion Scale, and the Behavioral and Faith Scale. Participants also read a threat- or non-threat-inducing article concerning the crisis of the Catholic Church. Results showed that individuals with high RWA scores demonstrated a greater support for religious fundamentalist ideals, reported less doubts regarding their religious beliefs, and identified more strongly with their religion than did those with low RWA scores. Furthermore, participants who were exposed to threat, regardless of individual level of authoritarianism, scored higher on a measure of religious fundamentalist ideals and identified more strongly with their respective religions than those who were not exposed to a threat. Most importantly, individuals high in authoritarianism who were exposed to threat demonstrated greater support for religious fundamentalist ideals, reported fewer doubts, and more strongly identified with their religion than those individuals with high levels of authoritarianism who were in the non-threatening article condition.     

On procreating today

This work reflects on the suffering and difficulties that men and women often experience during the process of procreation, beginning with the decision to suspend the use of contraception. The shared project that a child represents involves difficulties that are also a consequence of the culture in which we live: subject to early tests, ultrasound scans and so on, a planned pregnancy is dominated, throughout its development, by the secondary process of monitoring. A delay in conception, at times deriving from intolerance towards a body that does not immediately fulfil one’s own desires, sets in motion the diagnostic inquiry. During this time, while the long‐awaited moment of conception is further delayed, the desire for a son/daughter changes in quality and intensity. In a substantial number of cases, infertility remains unexplained, a situation in turn characterized by the fear that not knowing implies. Although the excessively simplistic and limited notion of psychogenic infertility has faded, a residue of unexpressed horror, difficult to frame even in analysis, persists in the couple. The end of the diagnostic inquiry means that assisted conception must be eventually faced. Fortunately, nowadays in psychoanalytic culture the fundamentalist tendencies that, in the past, led to forecasts of catastrophe, have subsided. Yet this remains a highly problematic area with many questions and few answers.     

Pastoral supervision today

The introduction of clinical pastoral education as a prerequisite to many forms of ministry and the initiation of D. Min. programs in theological schools call for a reappraisal of the process and substance of pastoral supervision. Effective models of supervision for D. Min. programs have not yet been identified, yet a CPE model is inherent in the requirements for the degree. The meaning, goals, content, and styles of supervision are discussed. A scale is included to assist students and supervisors to evaluate supervisory conferences.