Fostering Spiritual Development through the Religious Dimension of Schools: The report of a pilot study in 17 independent schools

In this article the author examines ways in which spiritual development can be fostered through the religious dimension of schools. She first looks the problem of defining 'spiritual development' and discusses some empirical work in this area. She then presents some of the findings of her pilot study into the perceptions of the religious dimension of their schools by 287 Year 7 and 231 Year 10 pupils in 17 girls' independent schools. She shows the insights gained into spiritual development from pupils' responses to questions on collective worship, Religious Education lessons and school ethos.     

Personality and Church Attendance Among Artists

A sample of 157 adult artists completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with information about the frequency of church attendance. The data confirmed that church attendance is significantly associated with psychoticism scores, but independent of both extraversion and neuroticism.     

Memory for faces: Encoding and retrieval operations

The reliable finding that trait judgments of faces yield better recognition memory than do feature judgments of faces is conceptualized as an encoding-specificity effect. Specifically, both trait-judgment encodings of faces and face-recognition tests are argued to be holistic, involving topographical information with between-feature processing. Consistent with the concept that encoding and retrieval operations interact to produce retrieval success, it was expected that a memory-for-face test using the Identi-kit (which requires reconstructions of the face at a feature level of analysis) would show trait-encoding tasks to be inferior to feature-encoding tasks. Eighty subjects were assigned randomly to judge a face on 10 trait dimensions (e.g., honesty-dishonesty) or on 10 feature dimensions (e.g., narrow nose-wide nose) and subsequently attempted to recognize the target among five distractors or to reconstruct the face from an Identi-kit. The significant interaction between encoding and retrieval operations indicated that the face was best identified under trait-encoding conditions but best reconstructed under feature-encoding conditions. The match between trait encoding and recognition in yielding high memory performance suggests strongly that trait judgments foster holistic processing of faces (i.e., interfeature topographical information is p-art of the context) and that the recognition of faces also is holistic. Finally, the utility of the feature- vs. holistic-processing distinction is questioned, and an alternative is proposed.     

An Examination of the Cognitive Mechanisms by Which Assigned Goals Affect Task Performance and Reactions to Performance1

In this study, cognitive mechanisms by which assigned goals affect task performance and reactions to performance were examined. Subjects working on a creativity task were assigned one of three performance goals varying in difficulty. Ratings of subjective probability of goal attainment, expected performance, expected satisfaction with goal attainment, and desired performance were obtained prior to each of five blocks of trials. Ratings of satisfaction with performance were obtained after each trial block and ratings of ability were obtained after all trials were completed. As predicted, with increased goal difficulty, subjective probability of goal attainment decreased, but expected performance, expected satisfaction with goal attainment, and desired performance increased. Contrary to prediction, the effect of goal difficulty on task performance was not significant. LISREL analyses revealed that goal difficulty exerted both positive (through expected and desired performance) and negative (through subjective probability of goal attainment) effects on performance. Goal difficulty had a negative effect on satisfaction with performance and ratings of perceived ability. The importance of identifying the cognitive mechanisms by which assigned goals affect performance and the need to consider consequences of assigned goals other than task performance are discussed.     

Handling greedy clergy roles: A dual clergy example

Striking changes have occurred in the number of women who have been ordained as clergy in the Protestant denominations in North America. With these changes has come a concomitant increase in the number of dual clergy couples. These couples are a new variant on the dual career theme. They share some of the same strains which have been identified for dual career couples in general; namely, identity issues, work and role overload, role cycling problems, social network dilemmas and discrepancies between personal and social norms. In addition, particular qualities of the clergy role create problems which these couples must address. One such problem is handling the ambivalent boundary between work and family roles. Two aspects of this issue are the absorptiveness of the role and the embeddedness of both work and family roles. The present paper discusses these boundary issues using data from a study of a population of dual clergy couples in two synods of the Lutheran church in two western Canadian provinces. Strategies for handling these issues are suggested for couples, church leaders and congregational representatives.Thanks are expressed to Les Vaala, Director of Student Life, Camrose Lutheran College, Camrose Alberta who was a cooperating researcher in the study.     

Gender differences in distributive justice preferences: The impact of domain

Past research has found that distributive justice preferences vary markedly both as a function of gender of allocator and the domain in which outcomes or rewards are allocated (e.g., relationships vs. work contexts). This study examined the interaction of these two factors in determining distributive justice preferences. Subjects were asked to fill out two scales designed to assess the degree to which their general distributive preferences in work contexts and in relationships were benevolent (prefer inputs to exceed outcomes), equity sensitive (prefer outcome/input ratios to be equal), or entitled (prefer outcomes to exceed inputs). Results revealed that women's preferences were significantly more benevolent (or less entitled) than men's in work domains, but that men's and women's distributive preferences did not differ significantly in relationships. In addition, both sexes indicated significantly more entitled preferences in work domains than in relationships, but the difference between domains was much greater for men than for women. These results suggest that, when considering issues of justice, men make a greater distinction between domains than do women, and that previously observed gender differences in distributive justice preferences may be specific to the work domain.     

Predicting career-entry pay expectations: The role of gender-based comparisons

This research investigated three sets of factors (career path factors, perceived job inputs, and reference group comparisons) as predictors of career-entry pay expectations for management students about to enter the workforce. As predicted, reference group comparisons accounted for a larger proportion of unique variance in students' pay expectations than either career path factors or perceived job inputs. In addition, same-sex comparisons were stronger predictors of career-entry pay expectations than opposite-sex comparisons. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Acculturation in Women with Mental Retardation and Its Impact on Genetic Counseling

The provision of genetic counseling to women with mild mental retardation poses many challenges, some directly related to their developmental and cognitive disabilities. Traditional genetic counseling models, in which decision-making is largely based on the understanding of factual information, are particularly affected by the intellectual limitations which characterize this population. Equally important, however, are these women's attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors related to their involuntary inclusion into a highly stigmatized social group. Common themes among these women which surface in the genetic counseling setting include the denial of mental retardation, a hierarchical perception of their own and others' disabilities, and a strong motivation to conceive and parent a child. Such attitudes and behaviors may be symptomatic of acculturation, as these women struggle to take on accepted social roles while rejecting the stigma of intellectual disability. In contrast to factual information, the counselee's ability to discuss emotions and perceptions is not necessarily hampered by her intellectual limitations. A focus on the recognition and discussion of psychosocial issues provides a more meaningful approach than traditional genetic counseling models for facilitating informed reproductive decisions among women with mental retardation.     

Abstract conceptualization in schizophrenia: a fundamental psychological deficit?

Wright (1975) has recently argued that impairment in abstract conceptualization is an important schizophrenic deficit. We contend that the data to which he refers are insufficient support for that conclusion. Although schizophrenics' performance on sorting tasks may be less efficient than that of some other groups, the significance of this finding is debatable. A differential deficit in conceptual ability has not been shown and the confounding effects of third variables have not been ruled out. In addition, the validity of sorting techniques in measuring abstraction has not been adequately established. These methodological issues have a more general applicability to the study of psychopathology. Appreciation of them and a more specific definition of "acceptable evidence" would reduce considerably the continuing state of confusion in research on psychological deficit.     

The pupil evaluation inventory

The Pupil Evaluation Inventory was developed to assess peer ratings of the behavior of male and female children in grades one through nine. Three homogeneous and stable factors emerged from a factor analysis: Aggression, Withdrawal and Likeability. High interrater agreement between male and female raters, stability of factorial structure, high internal consistency, and moderate concurrent validity were found across sex and grade levels. Test-retest reliability was high for a separate sample of third and sixth graders. There was a tendency for higher internal consistency and teacher-peer correlations for the Aggression factor.This research was supported by grant MH 21145 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by funds from the D. Grant Foundation, Inc. We wish also to acknowledge the support of the many school districts who have assisted us in this research.