Forced Termination of American Clergy: Its Effects and Connection to Negative Well-Being

Forced termination of clergy involves constant negativity found in personal attacks and criticism from a small congregational faction. The minister feels psychologically pressured to step down from the ministry position and this process is often demeaning to the emotional and physical well-being of the minister. The prevalence of forced termination among clergy has ranged from 25% among many denominations to 41% among Assemblies of God ministers. Forced termination and its effects are serious problems that have yet to be adequately addressed by scholars in social science research. The lack of scholarly research in this area called for a large national study from a reputable research institution. This online study shows that 28% of ministers among 39 denominations experienced a forced termination. Forced termination was associated with high levels of depression, stress, and physical health problems. Forced termination was also associated with low levels of self-efficacy, and self-esteem.     

Need for more evolutionary and developmental perspective on basic emotional mechanisms

Lindquist et al.'s meta-analysis focuses on adult humans; the authors' emotion model might be strengthened by considering research on infants and animals, highlighting the importance of the limbic system. Reliance on the James-Lange theory is questionable; emotions typically occur instantaneously, with dubious dependence on bodily feedback for affect. Stronger evidence for localization might be obtained using more precise emotion terms and alterative localization methods.     

Spiritual Issues in Counseling: What Do Students Perceive They Are Being Taught?

Client religious and spiritual practices have recently emerged as beneficial to both mental and physical health. However, graduates of counseling programs indicate that they have not been adequately trained to address religious and spiritual issues with clients. This exploratory study focused on the perceptions of counselors‐in‐training regarding what messages they received about these issues during their training programs, as well as their potential behaviors when working with clients. Results indicated that potential behaviors are not always consistent with what they are taught. Implications for training and future research are discussed.     

Emotion in the neutral face: a mechanism for impression formation?

The current work examined contributions of emotion-resembling facial cues to impression formation. There exist common facial cues that make people look emotional, male or female, and from which we derive personality inferences. We first conducted a Pilot Study to assess these effects. We found that neutral female versus neutral male faces were rated as more submissive, affiliative, na?ve, honest, cooperative, babyish, fearful, happy, and less angry than neutral male faces. In our Primary Study, we then "warped" these same neutral faces over their corresponding anger and fear displays so the resultant facial appearance cues now structurally resembled emotion while retaining a neutral visage (e.g., no wrinkles, furrows, creases, etc.). The gender effects found in the Pilot Study were replicated in the Primary Study, suggesting clear stereotype-driven impressions. Critically, ratings of the neutral-over-fear warps versus neutral-over-anger warps also revealed a profile similar to the gender-based ratings, revealing perceptually driven impressions directly attributable to emotion overgeneralisation.     

Liking and identifying emotionally expressive music: age and gender differences

Adults and children 5, 8, and 11 years of age listened to short excerpts of unfamiliar music that sounded happy, scary, peaceful, or sad. Listeners initially rated how much they liked each excerpt. They subsequently made a forced-choice judgment about the emotion that each excerpt conveyed. Identification accuracy was higher for young girls than for young boys, but both genders reached adult-like levels by age 11. High-arousal emotions (happiness and fear) were better identified than low-arousal emotions (peacefulness and sadness), and this advantage was exaggerated among younger children. Whereas children of all ages preferred excerpts depicting high-arousal emotions, adults favored excerpts depicting positive emotions (happiness and peacefulness). A preference for positive emotions over negative emotions was also evident among females of all ages. As identification accuracy improved, liking for positively valenced music increased among 5- and 8-year-olds but decreased among 11-year-olds.     

Message from a “Not So Wise Old Man”

At the start of the academic year, the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles has a Welcome Dinner during which the community gathers and is introduced to the new candidates training to become Jungian analysts and the new interns who work at the Kieffer E. Frantz Clinic, the first clinic to offer Jungian analysis on a sliding-fee scale. The staff is also invited to this event, held at a local restaurant with a large banquet room. It has become a tradition to invite a senior analyst to share their wisdom. Here is the talk given by Glenn Foy, the Institute's oldest member, at almost 97 years old.     

Approaching Nature, ‘Sustainability’ and Ecological Crises from a Critical Social Psychological Perspective

This article considers the potential contribution of critical social psychology to the study of the relationship between humans and nature, particularly in terms of the role of human activities in ecological degradation. That human behaviour is having a profound impact on global climate and related phenomena has garnered broad scientific consensus and is communicated to the public in increasingly sophisticated ways. Psychology has been increasingly drawn upon by policy makers, pressure groups and related institutions in this context, in the hope of understanding, predicting and shaping behaviour and lifestyles towards more sustainable ends. In the past few decades, cognitive behaviourist models have dominated research and policy agendas concerned with identifying barriers to, and/or promoting ‘environmentally sustainable’ or ‘pro‐environmental’ behaviour. Yet despite the emergence of critical work, to date, there has been very little work in this field explicitly under the banner of critical social psychology. In this article, a brief outline of some of the tenets of critical social psychology is followed by a consideration of how these principles have been taken up in existing cross‐disciplinary critical approaches to the interrelated issues of environment, sustainability and human behaviour and the potential contribution of critical social psychology in these areas.