The Influence of Avoidance Temperament and Avoidance‐Based Achievement Goals on Flow

In the present research, we conducted two studies designed to examine the joint influence of avoidance temperament and avoidance‐based achievement goals on the experience of flow on a creativity task. In both a laboratory study (N = 101; M_age = 22.61, SD_age = 4.03; 74.3% female) and a naturalistic study (N = 102; M_age = 16.23, SD_age = 1.13; 48% female), participants high in avoidance temperament were shown to experience greater flow when performance‐avoidance goals were induced; no differences were found in any of the other three achievement goal conditions from the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework. These findings reveal a short‐term benefit for a disposition‐goal match grounded in avoidance motivation, and point to the need for more research on both avoidance‐based matches and the short‐term versus long‐term implications of such matches.     

The Revolution Betrayed: A Commentary on Muriel Dimen’s Inside the Revolution

The phrase “wild analysis” is evaluated with a view to understanding something about the conditions and constraints on psychoanalytic theory and practice. Muriel Dimen’s paper is also read as a prologue for new, less restrictive stories about the nature of psychoanalysis.     

Medical slang in British hospitals

The usage, derivation, and psychological, ethical, and legal aspects of slang terminology in medicine are discussed. The colloquial vocabulary is further described and a comprehensive glossary of common UK terms provided in appendix. This forms the first list of slang terms currently in use throughout the British medical establishment.     

Perspective and prejudice: antecedents and mediating mechanisms

The present work investigated mechanisms by which Whites' prejudice toward Blacks can be reduced (Study 1) and explored how creating a common ingroup identity can reduce prejudice by promoting these processes (Study 2). In Study 1, White participants who viewed a videotape depicting examples of racial discrimination and who imagined the victim's feelings showed greater decreases in prejudice toward Blacks than did those in the objective and no instruction conditions. Among the potential mediating affective and cognitive variables examined, reductions in prejudice were mediated primarily by feelings associated with perceived injustice. In Study 2, an intervention designed to increase perceptions of a common group identity before viewing the videotape, reading that a terrorist threat was directed at all Americans versus directed just at White Americans, also reduced prejudice toward Blacks through increases in feelings of injustice.     

The Effects of Participation in Goal Setting and Goal Rationales on Goal Commitment: An Exploration of Justice Mediators

The interactive effect of participation in goal setting and goal rationales on goal commitment was examined in the present study. Two justice mediation models that might explain these effects were also hypothesized. The results of a laboratory study demonstrated that goal rationales were especially important for increasing goal commitment when goals were assigned rather than participatively set. Support was also found for the role of interactional justice in mediating the effect of goal rationales on goal commitment; however, the hypothesis that procedural justice would mediate the effect of goal participation on goal commitment was not supported.     

Differential fan effect and attentional focus

As people study more facts about a concept, it takes longer to retrieve a particular fact about that concept. This fan effect (Anderson, 1974) has been attributed to competition among associations to a concept. Alternatively, the mental-model theory (Radvansky & Zacks, 1991) suggests that the fan effect disappears when the related concepts are organized into a single mental model. In the present study, attentional focus was manipulated to affect the mental model to be constructed. One group of participants focused on the person dimension of personlocation pairs, whereas the other group focused on the location dimension. The result showed that the fan effect with the focused dimension was greater than the fan effect with the nonfocused dimension, which is contrary to the mental-model theory. The number of associations with a concept is indeed crucial during retrieval, and the importance of the information seems to be accentuated with attentional focus.     

Forum: Crafting the Introductory Course in Religious Studies

This series of short essays considers the complex choices and decision‐making processes of instructors preparing to teach, and continuing to teach, introductory courses in religious studies. In a paper originally presented in the University of Chicago's “The Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion” series, Russell McCutcheon explores a “baker's dozen” of such choices and the larger pedagogical problems with which they are entwined, ranging from classic questions of skill development and content coverage to philosophical concerns around students' identification with their topics of study and institutional concerns around governance and assessment. Aaron Hollander provides a brief introduction and four doctoral students at the University of Chicago Divinity School respond to McCutcheon's essay, widening its scope, testing its applicability, and interrogating its undergirding suppositions from the perspective of early‐career educators in the field.     

Black Church Leaders’ Attitudes About Mental Health Services: Role of Racial Discrimination

Black church leaders are often first responders to mental health issues in the Black community, yet few researchers have examined their attitudes about seeking outside mental health services. In order to fill this gap, we surveyed 112 church leaders in a northeastern urban Baptist Black mega-church (22 associate pastors, 34 deacons, and 56 congregation care givers) using The National Survey of American Life. Findings suggest church leaders more often relied on the church community and alternative health services, leaders who attended church more often tended to report not receiving any outside mental health treatment, the closer church leaders felt to all Black people, the less satisfied they were with help received from formal mental health services, and leaders who experienced more racial discrimination tended to report worse overall mental and physical health. Clinical providers and Black churches should develop collaborative partnerships to better meet the needs of this community.