Reviews of current books

Pastoral Psychology -     

Classifying Muslims: Contextualizing Religion and Race in the United Kingdom and Germany

Since the late 20th century, public discourse in Muslim-minority countries has centered around the question of how to classify Muslims. In this paper, we compare the state, academic, and self-classification of Muslims in two countries: the United Kingdom and Germany. We propose that the historical experience of anti-Semitism makes religion a more salient master category to understand Muslims in Germany, while the history of both anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism largely resulting from colonial domination means that religion together with race are master categories used to understand Muslims in the United Kingdom. Through this multilayered ethnographic and historical analysis, we challenge taken-for-granted assumptions in both the political and academic milieu about what it means to be Muslim, emphasizing the importance of the interplay between sociopolitical categories and self-identifications.     

A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor.     

All Anxiety is not Created Equal: Correlates of Parent/Youth Agreement Vary Across Subtypes of Anxiety

Research has examined patterns and correlates of parent/youth informant discrepancies in the reporting of youth anxiety. However, little work has examined whether it is better to conceptualize patterns and correlates of informant disagreement across anxiety broadly, or more useful to consider disagreement on specific symptom clusters. Using data from the Child Adolescent/Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS; N?=?488; Walkup et al. The New England Journal of Medicine, 359(26), 2753-2766. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa0804633, 2008), the current study applied the most recent recommended analytic strategies to study informant discrepancies and examined differences in the magnitude and patterns of disagreement for: (a) broadband anxiety symptoms, versus (b) symptoms of specific anxiety diagnoses (or anxiety subtypes; e.g., separation, social anxiety). Correlates of informant discrepancies were also examined. Results indicated that there was variability in agreement across anxiety subtypes, with parent/youth agreement higher on separation anxiety and school refusal symptoms relative to other domains. Parental psychopathology was associated with disagreement on broadband anxiety symptoms, such that parental psychopathology was highest when parents reported higher symptoms than their children; however, this finding was largely driven by a relationship between parental psychopathology and disagreement on separation anxiety symptoms. Age was associated with disagreement on total and separation anxiety symptoms. Gender was not associated with disagreement. Clinical implications are discussed.     

INSIGHTFULNESS AND LATER INFANT ATTACHMENT IN CLINICALLY DEPRESSED AND NONCLINICAL MOTHERS

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the relationship between maternal insightfulness and sensitivity and subsequent infant attachment security and disorganization in clinically depressed and nonclinical mother–infant groups. Nineteen depressed mothers with infants ages 3 to 11 months participated in this study. Twenty nonclinical mother–infant dyads were matched to the clinical sample according to infant sex and age. Maternal depression was assessed using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), insightfulness using the Insightfulness Assessment (IA), and sensitivity using the Maternal Sensitivity Scales (M.D.S. Ainsworth, 1969). IA classifications and subscales were considered separately. Later infant attachment was assessed by the Strange Situation Procedure (M.D.S. Ainsworth, M.C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978). Depressed mothers tended to have less securely attached children than did nonclinical mothers. Within the clinical sample, the insightfulness categories correlated slightly moderately with attachment security, but were not related to attachment disorganization. Within the nonclinical sample, the IA categories were slightly moderately associated with attachment security and with disorganization. On IA subscales, relationship patterns differed in clinically depressed and nonclinical mother–infant dyads. These findings provide the first evidence of the predictive power of the IA categorization and subscales on subsequent infant attachment. They also may allow the development of different foci of intervention for enhancing insightful caregiving.