Why women fail/succeed in ministry: Psychological factors

A study was made of the most and least successful women minister graduates of Christian Theological Seminary since 1959. Significant differences were found in several scales of the CTMM, the ACL and the MMPI. These indicated, for example, higher intelligence, a better self-image, more openness to feelings and to general human faults plus alternative viewpoints, more leadership ability and ability to take charge of their own lives, for the more successful women. Implications for helpful interventions were discussed.Dr. Cardwell is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling and Director of the Pastoral Counseling Service at Christian Theological Seminary, 1000 West 42nd Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46208.     

The perception of briefly exposed point-sources of light

Point-sources of light (dots) were exposed for 10 to 50 msec, before five dark-adapted subjects in a dimly illuminated room. During voluntary fixation with one eye, the target was exposed some 10° on the nasal side of the optic axis. The intensity X duration of all targets was 2 X threshold and they consisted of either a single dot, or a pair of dots separated by a distance that was less than that required for two-point discrimination. In two-thirds of trials both the single-dot and the two-dot targets were perceived as short thin lines of various orientation. Although individual percepts were unpredictable, there was a preferred or most likely orientation for responses to the single-dot target; this was near to the horizontal for all five subjects. There was no significant difference between the preferred orientations for single-dot targets tested at sites more than 1° apart in the visual field. When two single-dot targets, separated by about 1°, were exposed simultaneously, the orientations of the perceived lines sometimes differed by as much as 80°; occasionally, one target was reported as a dot while the other was seen as a thin line. If the single-dot was briefly exposed between two continuously visible and parallel straight lines, the target usually appeared as a thin line, parallel to the framing lines. Some of these results appear to be consistent with the hypothesis that the human visual cortex, like that of the cat and monkey, contains neurones that are orientation specific.     

Accuracy of person perception: do people know what kinds of impressions they convey?

Do people know what kinds of impressions they convey to other people during particular social interactions? In a study designed to answer this question, subjects interacted individually with three partners on each of four different tasks. After each interaction, participants reported their impressions of the other person's likability and competence. They also postdicted the impressions they believed they conveyed to the other person along the same dimensions. Accuracy was computed as recommended by Cronbach (1955) and by Kenny's (1981) Social Relations Model. Subjects could tell to a significant degree how the impressions they conveyed to their partners changed over time (time accuracy) and how they changed over time in different ways with different partners (differential accuracy). They could also tell how their competence was differentially perceived by different partners (dyadic accuracy). However, they were not very accurate at discerning which partners perceived them as most competent or most likable across all interactions (person accuracy). Subjects believed that they conveyed similar impressions of themselves to all of their partners, although actually partners evidenced little agreement with each other in their impressions of a given subject. The implications of these findings for symbolic-interactionist theories of the development of the self and impression-management perspectives on social behavior are described.     

Sociodemographic Factors Associated with Types of Projects Implemented by Volunteer Lay Health Educators in Their Congregations

This study focused on the association between type of community health interventions and lay health educator variables. Lay health educators are volunteers from local faith communities who complete a healthcare training program, taught by physicians in-training. Lay health educators are instructed to implement health-related initiatives in their respective communities after graduation. Of the 72 graduates since 2011, we surveyed 55 lay health educators to gain insight into their involvement with their congregation and the type of health projects they have implemented. We dichotomized the health projects into “raising awareness” and “teaching new health skills.” Using adjusted logistic regression models, variables associated with implementing health projects aimed at teaching health skills included length of time as a member of their congregation, current employment, and age. These results may help future programs prepare lay health community educators for the type of health interventions they intend to implement in their respective communities.     

On the predictive validity of behavioral momentum theory for mitigating resurgence of problem behavior

We summarize the results of four recent translational studies from our lab that used the predictions of behavioral momentum theory to inform the development of more durable treatments for destructive behavior. Treatments informed by behavioral momentum theory generally showed better suppression of target responding during an extinction challenge than did a comparison treatment. We reanalyze data from each of the four studies to show that this general finding is apparent both at the aggregate (i.e., proportion of baseline response rates averaged across participants) and within participant (i.e., percentage reduction in proportion of baseline response rates, difference in raw response rates during the extinction challenge). Interestingly, participants who experienced multiple cycles of the extinction challenge generally showed less differentiation in target responding between the treatment informed by behavioral momentum theory and the comparison treatment. Overall results suggest that applications of behavioral momentum theory can substantially improve the durability of common treatments for destructive behavior.     

In Communion with God’s Sparrow: Incorporating Animal Agency into the Environmental Vision of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laudato Sí</Emphasis>

Although a conventional environmentalism focuses on the health of ecological systems, Pope Francis’s 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Sí invokes St. Francis of Assisi to emphasize God’s love for the individual organism, no matter how small. Decrying the tendency to regard other creatures as mere objects to be controlled and used, Pope Francis urges our enactment of a ‘universal communion’ governed by love. I suggest, however, that Laudato Sí’s animal ethic, as focused on ordering human and animal need, is inadequate to its overarching vision of cross-species communion. This vision requires the sort of cross-species relational bridge implicit in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s view of agency as an irreducibly ‘animate’ expression of choice and afforded further definition in Kenneth J. Shapiro’s conception of a ‘kinesthetic empathy.’ As the phenomenological epistemology underlying both discourses makes possible a rough correspondence, I put these in conversation to demonstrate that a Merleau-Pontyan and reciprocal agency is a constitutive aspect of the fullest sort of cross-species relation, such that recognition of this agency can both deepen our understanding of ‘universal communion’ and foster engagement in its practice.