Job Stress and Dyadic Synchrony in Police Marriages: A Preliminary Investigation

Despite reports documenting adverse effects of stress on police marriages, few empirical studies focus on actual emotional behaviors of officers and spouses. In this preliminary investigation, 17 male police officers and their nonpolice wives completed daily stress diaries for 1 week and then participated in a laboratory‐based discussion about their respective days. Conversations were video‐recorded and coded for specific emotional behaviors reflecting hostility and affection, which are strong predictors of marital outcomes. We examined associations between officers' job stress (per diaries and the Police Stress Survey) and couples' emotional behavior (mean levels and behavioral synchrony) using a dyadic repeated measures design capitalizing on the large number of observations available for each couple (1020 observations). When officers reported more job stress, they showed less hostility, less synchrony with their wives' hostility, and more synchrony with their wives' affection; their wives showed greater synchrony with officers' hostility and less synchrony with officers' affection. Therefore, for officers, greater job stress was associated with less behavioral negativity, potentially less attunement to wives' negativity, but potentially greater attunement to wives' affection—perhaps a compensatory strategy or attempt to buffer their marriage from stress. These attempts may be less effective, however, if, as our synchrony findings may suggest, wives are focusing on officers' hostility rather than affection. Although it will be important to replicate these results given the small sample, our findings reveal that patterns of behavioral synchrony may be a key means to better understand how job stress exacts a toll on police marriages.     

The only X and Y principle

In this paper, I consider the validity and proper formulation of the only‐x‐and‐y principle, which states, roughly, that whether a later individual, y, is numerically identical to an earlier individual, x, can depend only on facts about x and y and the relationships between them. In the course of my investigation, I distinguish between two classes of physical entities?–?those that exist in a ‘real’ sense, and those that exist in a mere Cambridge sense. This distinction is grounded in Peter Geach's distinction between ‘real’ and mere Cambridge change. I argue in favor of a modified version of the only‐x‐and‐y principle?–?the qualified only‐x‐and‐y principle?–?which applies to entities that exist in a ‘real’ sense, but not to mere Cambridge entities. It is also argued that the plausibility of the qualified only‐x‐and‐y principle has more to do with facts about the nature of causality than with intuitions we have about existence or numerical identity. I finish by considering some traditional objections to the only‐x‐and‐y principle, and conclude that they do not succeed in refuting the qualified only‐x‐and‐y principle.     

The Search for Iconographic Variation in Roman Mithraism

This paper concerns the interpretation of iconography in the absence of any confirmatory textual explanation. Variations in iconographical representation are often considered as indicators of doctrinal variation rather than in the context of artistic style. This is particularly important when the icons examined are apparently of primary significance in the belief system under scrutiny. A detailed analysis of one specific example of Mithraic iconography reveals significant variations, both in location and in composition. Throughout the Roman Empire, significant differences have also occurred between examples found within the same regions, making the suggestion that iconographic variation equals theological variation difficult to sustain. In support of the work of E. Will, this paper suggests that regional artistic influences may have played a greater significance in the development of Mithraic icons than many present academics would allow. Further, this paper suggests that the evidence indicates that the Mithraic canon of iconographic representation was sufficiently flexible for the individualization of Mithraic monuments, and for elements of one scene to be ‘borrowed’ and incorporated into another.     

Survey article: Christianity in the People's Republic of China

Jeppe Sinding Jensen and Luther H. Martin (eds), Rationality and the Study of Religion. Acta Jutlandica LXXII: 1, Theology Series 19. Aarhus, Aarhus University Press, 1997, 221 pp., n.p., ISBN 87 7288 692 7).

Phillip Blond (ed.), Post-Secular Philosophy. London, Routledge, 1998, xiii+376 pp., £50, $85 (hardback) ISBN 0 415 09777 0, £15.99, $24.99 (paperback) ISBN 0 415 09778 9.

Peter and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, xii+596 pp., £15.99 (paperback) ISBN 0 19 860216 2.

Andrew Rawlinson, The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions. La Salle, IL, Open Court, 1997, xix+650 pp., $34.95, £31.50 (paperback) ISBN 0 812 69310 8.

C. G. Jung, Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, edited and selected by Roderick Main. New York and London, Routledge, vi+177 pp., $69.95, £45 (hardback) ISBN 0 415 15509 6, (paperback) $18.95, £14.99 ISBN 0 415 15508 8.

Rosalind Hackett, Art and Religion in Africa. Religion and the Arts Series. London, Cassell, 1996, 240 pp., 113 drawings and black-and-white photographs, four colour plates, n.p. ISBN 0 304 33752 8.

Schubert M. Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1992, iii+114 pp., $12.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 87074 329 5.

N. Ross Reat and Edmund F. Perry, A World Theology: The Central Spiritual Reality of Humankind. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, iii+314 pp., $65.00, £45.00 ISBN 0 521 33159 5.     

False memory and importance: Can we prioritize encoding without consequence?

Given the large amount of information that we encounter, we often must prioritize what information we attempt to remember. Although critical for everyday functioning, relatively little research has focused on how people prioritize the encoding of information. Recent research has shown that people can and do selectively remember information assigned with higher, relative to lower, importance. However, the mechanisms underlying this prioritization process and the consequences of these processes are still not well understood. In the present study, we sought to better understand these prioritization processes and whether implementing these processes comes at the cost of memory accuracy, by increasing false memories. We used a modified form of the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, in which participants studied DRM lists, with each list paired with low, medium, or high point values. In Experiment 1, encoding higher values led to more false memories than did encoding lower values, possibly because prioritizing information enhanced relational processing among high-value words. In Experiment 2, disrupting relational processing selectively reduced false memories for high-value words. Finally, in Experiment 3, facilitating relational processing selectively increased false memories for low-value words. These findings suggest that while prioritizing information can enhance true memory, this process concomitantly increases false memories. Furthermore, the mechanism underlying these prioritization processes depends on the ability to successfully engage in relational processing. Thus, how we prioritize the encoding of incoming information can come at a cost in terms of accurate memory.     

Partial word knowledge in the absence of recall

Attributes of words can be known even when the words are not currently retrievable. Although repeatedly demonstrated for semantic and contextual dimensions, the evidence is ambiguous for structural characteristics. The present research demonstrates significant above-chance first-letter knowledge across four ordinal levels of retrieval confidence for nonretrieved words—tip of the tongue (TOT), high familiar, low familiar, unfamiliar. Contrary to prior research, there was minimal evidence for syllable number knowledge, even at highest confidence levels. Initial letter recognition in the absence of retrieval resembles the recognition without identification in episodic memory (Cleary, Current Directions in Psychological Science 17: 353–357, 2008), and such implicit familiarity may contribute more generally to confidence assessments of word knowledge in both semantic and episodic memory domains. Furthermore, this outcome suggests that word feature priming in the form of partial phonological activation may occur to some extent for all words during a retrieval attempt, and even for ones that are judged to be unknown.     

Pediatric traumatic brain injury: Language outcomes and their relationship to the arcuate fasciculus

Pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) may result in long-lasting language impairments alongside dysarthria, a motor-speech disorder. Whether this co-morbidity is due to the functional links between speech and language networks, or to widespread damage affecting both motor and language tracts, remains unknown.     

Casinos and banking: Organized crime in the Bahamas

The symbiotic relationships among gambling casinos, offshore banks and professional criminals are complex. In numerous contemporary cases, professional criminals from the United States and elsewhere are known to utilize both casinos and financial institutions to launder money and to hide large amounts of illicitly acquired money. Long before recent revelations of such activities became known in the Caribbean and the U. S., developers in the Bahamas had started the process of bringing casinos and banks together to serve underworld interests. This paper traces the developments of that process and shows how American organized crime interests penetrated the Bahamas by using gambling and banking to gain a firm foothold.     

Predicting intolerance: The impact of parents’ own tolerance vs. social class and religious fundamentalism

The impact of parental intolerance, social class, and religious fundamentalism on the level of tolerance of post‐adolescent children is assessed on a sample of 205 mother‐father‐child triads. Social class plays an indirect role, and religious fundamentalism is shown to be the primary mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of intolerance. The concept of intolerance is extended so as to focus on reactions to deviant behavior. There is little evidence of specific sex linkage contrasts.