How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind

For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub‐disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition. First, we show that although adults explicitly discriminate supernatural minds from human minds, their implicit responses reveal far less discrimination. Next, we demonstrate that children's religious cognition often matches adults' implicit responses, revealing anthropomorphic notions of God's mind. Together, data from children and adults suggest the intuitive nature of perceiving God's mind as human‐like. We then propose three complementary explanations for why anthropomorphism persists in adulthood, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be (a) an instance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic; (b) a reflection of early testimony; and/or (c) an evolutionary byproduct.     

Stable middle-aged face recognition: No moderation of the own-age bias across contexts

The own-age bias (OAB) has been proposed to be caused by perceptual expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Investigations into the role of social cognition have, however, yielded mixed results. One reason for this might be the tendency for research to focus on the OAB in young adults, between young and older adult faces where other-age individuation experience is low. To explore whether social-cognitive manipulations may be successful when observers have sufficient other-age individuation experience, we examined biases involving middle-aged other-age faces and the influence of a context manipulation. Across four experiments, young adult participants were presented with middle-aged faces alongside young or older adult faces to remember. We predicted that in contexts where middle-aged faces were positioned as other-age faces (alongside young adult faces), recognition performance would be worse than when they were positioned as relative own-age faces (alongside older adult faces). However, the context manipulations did not moderate middle age face recognition. This suggests that past findings that context does not change other-age face recognition holds for other-age faces for which observers have higher individuation experience. These findings are consistent with a perceptual expertise account of the OAB but more investigation of the generality of these results is required.     

Robert Baker: The Structure of Moral Revolutions: Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion,Death, and the Bioethics Revolution

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Understanding the richness of brand relationships: Research dialogue on brands as intentional agents

This essay offers some perspectives on Kervyn et al.'s insightful research on brand relationships and the role of perceived intentions and ability. After briefly discussing the importance of brand knowledge and functionality in understanding the diversity of brand relationships, some other antecedents and consequences of brand relationships are reviewed. Three antecedents of corporate credibility — expertise, trust, and likability — are suggested as another means to differentiate how consumers view different brands. Brand resonance — an intense, active loyalty relationship — is also suggested as an important outcome of brand relationships. The essay concludes by noting that any concept as complex as brand relationships lends itself to multiple concepts, perspectives, and analysis.     

Emotions and Emotion Regulation Among Novice Military Parachutists

Soldiers (N = 95) reported emotions and emotion regulation strategies experienced in their first parachute jump and other challenging situations. Results indicated an emotional profile characterized by feeling anxious, energetic, and happy before parachuting and playing sport. However, this pattern was not similar to the emotional responses experienced at work or in life in general. Participants reported greater use of strategies to increase unpleasant emotions an hour before parachuting than in other situations. Findings suggest that developing training protocols to increase the flexibility and versatility of emotion regulation skills might enhance the preparation of novice soldiers for military duties.     

Standing Out From the Crowd: How Comparison to Prototypes Can Decrease Health-Risk Behavior in Young Adults

This research tested whether social comparison can encourage adolescents to make less risky health decisions. Two studies demonstrated that when young adults compare themselves with drinkers, they become less willing to drink if they perceive dissimilarity between themselves and those drinkers. When participants in Study 1 compared with someone who drinks regularly, their perceived similarity to prototypical drinkers was positively related to their willingness to drink. In Study 2, participants identified or contrasted themselves with prototypical drinkers; those encouraged to contrast who also felt less similar to the prototype reported less willingness to drink. These studies support the prototype/willingness model's assumption that prototypes affect willingness to drink through social comparison.     

Providing information about diagnostic features at retrieval reduces false recognition

In the following study, participants encoded blocked DRM word lists and we varied whether they received information before test about the utility of mnemonic features that potentially discriminate between veridical and false memories. The results of three experiments revealed that this manipulation successfully reduced false recognition of critical theme words. We also found that this manipulation was effective for younger but not older adults. Furthermore, calling attention to the features in test instructions alone was sufficient for reducing false recognition and its effectiveness was not enhanced by also asking participants to rate their phenomenal experience. We argue that providing diagnostic information before test allows participants to establish more accurate expectations about the task and thus improves the efficacy of retrieval and monitoring processes that are subsequently engaged.     

Child Find Practices in Christian Schools

The 1997 Amendments of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that children placed in private schools by their parents are no longer afforded the right to special education services. However, IDEA does state that child find activities between public school representatives and private schools are to remain intact. This study used an open-ended questionnaire design in order to understand Christian school representatives' perspectives regarding current child find practices.     

Sons and Mothers: New Insight into the End of Active Motherhood in the ‘Age of Austerity’

True independence is difficult for young adults to achieve by leaving home due to economic austerity and contemporary expectation. Such extended dependence has, however, been little studied. Midlife mothers were interviewed to explore their experience of having their adult sons live at home. The interviews were analysed using Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin in Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1990). The essence of the mothers’ (n = 5) experience was captured in the core category, Coming to Terms and Entering a New Phase. This category integrates the three-stage model of process that occurred as mothers accepted that their maternal role was changing and they needed to prepare for the next stage of their lives. The three stages were represented by the subcategories, Shifting Role, Anticipating Loss and Letting Go. The women believed that their sons would not be able to leave home until they could purchase a property, a distant prospect for many. The findings extend the work of previous lifespan models, including that of Apter (Secret paths: women in the new midlife. W. W. Norton, New York, 1995) but with greater depth and clarity, in a vital and changed contemporary context that is likely to be relevant for a large population of women.