NATURAL LAWS AND DIVINE INTERVENTION: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES BEING PENTECOSTAL OR CHARISMATIC MAKE?

The question about divine action remains contested in the discussion between theology and science. This issue is further exacerbated with the entry of pentecostals and charismatics into the conversation, especially with their emphases on divine intervention and miracles. I explore what happens at the intersection of these discourses, identifying first how the concept of “laws of nature” has developed in theology and science and then probing what pentecostal‐charismatic insights might add into the mix. Drawing from the triadic and evolutionary metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce, I propose a reconsideration of the “laws of nature” as habitual, dynamic, and general but nevertheless real tendencies through which the Holy Spirit invites the world to inhabit the coming kingdom of God. This proposal contributes to the articulation of an authentic Pentecostal‐charismatic witness at the theology‐and‐science table while also enabling a more plausible and coherent account of divine action for pentecostal‐charismatic piety and Christian practice in the twenty‐first century.     

Visualizing space,time, and agents: production,performance, and preference

Visualizations of space, time, and agents (or objects) are ubiquitous in science, business, and everyday life, from weather maps to scheduling meetings. Effective communications, including visual ones, emerge from use in the field, but no conventional visualization form has yet emerged for this confluence of information. The real-world spiral of production, comprehension, and use that fine-tunes communications can be accelerated in the laboratory. Here, we do so in search of effective visualizations of space, time, and agents. Users’ production, preference, and performance aligned to favor matrix representations with time as rows or columns and space and agents as entries. Overall, performance and preference were greater for matrices with discrete dots representing cell entries than for matrices with lines, but lines connecting cells may provide an advantage when evaluating temporal sequence. Both the diagram type and the technique have broader applications.     

Unprovoked aggression: effects of psychopathic traits and sadism

Psychopathic individuals engage in the most violent and cold-blooded acts of aggression. In the laboratory, psychopathy traits have been linked to the commission of unprovoked aggression. The purpose of this study was to assess affective motives that may underlie the relationship between psychopathy and unprovoked aggression. One hundred thirty-seven men viewed a series of photographs depicting violent imagery, completed a lexical decision task designed to assess state affect, and competed in a laboratory-based aggression paradigm. Results indicated that participants who responded faster to happiness words after viewing violent imagery (i.e., sadistic) were significantly more likely to engage in unprovoked aggression. Additionally, Factor 1 psychopathy (emotional detachment) predicted increased probability of unprovoked aggression; however, this relationship was not mediated by sadism. Rather, Factor 1 and sadism each independently predicted unprovoked aggression. The implications of the present data suggest that the type of violence evinced may inform the risk for perpetration of future acts. That is, the individual who demonstrates unprovoked violence may be more likely to employ aggressive tactics across situational contexts than the individual who demonstrates only impulsive acts of hostile/reactive aggression.     

Biased retellings of events yield biased memories

When people retell events, they take different perspectives for different audiences and purposes. In four experiments, we examined the effects of this postevent reorganization of events on memory for the original events. In each experiment, participants read a story, wrote a biased letter about one of the story characters, and later remembered the original story. Participants' letters contained more story details and more elaborations relevant to the purpose of their retellings. More importantly, the letter perspective affected the amount of information recalled (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and the direction of the errors in recall (Experiments 1 and 3) and recognition (Experiment 2). Selective rehearsal plays an important role in these bias effects: retelling involves selectively retrieving and using story information, with consequent differences in memory. However, biased memory occurred even when the biased letters contained little, if any, specific information (Experiment 4) or contained the same amount and kinds of story information as a neutral control condition (Experiment 3). Biased memory is a consequence of the reorganizing schema guiding the retelling perspective, in addition to the effects of rehearsing specific information in retelling.     

Structuring information interfaces for procedural learning

Interface design should be informed by the application of top-down cognitive principles derived from basic theory and research. Cognitive design principles from 2 domains, event cognition and media, were applied to the design of interfaces for teaching procedures. According to theories of event cognition, procedures should be presented hierarchically, organized by objects or large object parts and actions on objects. According to research on effects of media, adding appropriate graphics to text instructions can facilitate learning and memory. These principles were partially supported in 2 tasks: assembling a musical instrument and building a model. Although both top-down principles were effective in guiding interface design, they were not sufficient. They can be combined with iterative bottom-up methods to produce usable interfaces.     

Helplessness: The inability to know-that you don’t know-how

The sense of helplessness stands at the very core of the traumatic experience. This paper suggests that a sense of helplessness arises when, despite the functioning of the cognitive system and awareness of circumstances and feelings, an individual is unable to access practical knowledge. As a result, the subject becomes a victim of one’s own inability to perform, or act, in the real world.