Responsive behaviors in good times and in bad

Although self‐disclosure is a critical aspect of interactions between intimate partners, having a partner who is responsive to one’s needs after the disclosure is equally important. But what does responsiveness look like? Two observational coding systems for responsive behaviors (Study 1) were created to test the links between one partner’s behaviors and the other partner’s outcomes, on videotaped interactions of 79 U.S. dating couples disclosing positive and negative events with each other (Study 2). These systems were useful across both types of disclosure interactions, providing evidence for the importance of responsive behaviors in different contexts. Responsive behaviors were associated with postinteraction perceptions of responsiveness, which is important for understanding how the behavioral response impacts both the discloser and the relationship.     

Vague Singulars,Semantic Indecision,and the Metaphysics of Persons*

Composite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.     

Proximity Matters: Exploring Relationships Among Neighborhoods, Congregations, and the Residential Patterns of Members

Using the Philadelphia Congregations Census, the Neighborhood Change Database, the U.S. Census, and geographic information systems (GIS) software, this study compared characteristics of congregations made up of members who live nearby their congregation's building to those with more members who commute from outside the immediate area or outside the city. We considered whether the neighborhood characteristics in which the "commuter" versus "resident" congregations were located differed in regard to racial composition, socioeconomic status, and residential stability. The study found that where the pastor lives in relation to the building, denomination, racial composition of membership, and the stability of the neighborhood were related to members' residential proximity to the congregation building.