Conversion Studies,Pastoral Counseling,and Cultural Studies: Engaging and Embracing a New Paradigm

This paper is an invitation to explore ways in which the study of conversion, pastoral counseling, and cultural studies may be mutually enriching. The author will provide a survey of contemporary conversion studies with the goal of encouraging pastoral counselors and psychotherapists to include the study of conversion as an integral part of their agenda. It will also suggest means by which the field of pastoral counseling may be beneficial to conversion scholars during a time when the study of conversion is not only enjoying a rebirth of interest, but also an astonishing transformation of meanings, methods, and paradigms. Since conversion studies, once the province of evangelical Christians and rather specialized scholars in the psychology and sociology of religion, now involve anthropologists, historians, theologians, religious studies researchers, and new approaches to the phenomenon within psychology and sociology have emerged, this paper will explore some of these developments. It is time for pastoral theologians and pastoral counselors to re-engage both the phenomenon and study of conversion. It will also argue for an interdisciplinary approach inclusive of various perspectives, one that focuses on specific domains of research and theoretical critique and refinement.     

Decreased empathic sensitivity for distressed infants in neurotic adults: The mediating role of remembered parental rejection

The primary purpose of the present research was to determine whether negative reactions to infant distress in neurotic adults are mediated by representations of same sex parental rejection. Participants were 308 adult males and females who completed questionnaires assessing their personality and their representations of their parents’ care-giving from childhood. Participants also reported their own empathic reactions toward emotionally distressed and non-distressed infants. The present findings revealed that neuroticism significantly predicted a greater recall of parental rejection which, in turn, predicted decreased empathy ratings for distressed infants. In addition, recollections of father rejection mediated the relation between neuroticism and empathy in men, while recollections of maternal rejection mediated the relation between these variables in women.     

Can the absence of prejudice be more threatening than its presence? It depends on one's worldview

The present research used validated cardiovascular measures to examine threat reactions among members of stigmatized groups when interacting with members of nonstigmatized groups who were, or were not, prejudiced against their group. The authors hypothesized that people's beliefs about the fairness of the status system would moderate their experience of threat during intergroup interactions. The authors predicted that for members of stigmatized groups who believe the status system is fair, interacting with a prejudiced partner, compared with interacting with an unprejudiced partner, would disconfirm their worldview and result in greater threat. In contrast, the authors predicted that for members of stigmatized groups who believe the system is unfair, interacting with a prejudiced partner, compared with interacting with an unprejudiced partner, would confirm their worldview and result in less threat. The authors examined these predictions among Latinas interacting with a White female confederate (Study 1) and White females interacting with a White male confederate (Study 2). As predicted, people's beliefs about the fairness of the status system moderated their experiences of threat during intergroup interactions, indicated both by cardiovascular responses and nonverbal behavior. The specific pattern of the moderation differed across the 2 studies.     

Advances,Problems, and Challenges in the Study of Emotion Regulation: A Commentary

As observed by Zinbarg and Mineka (American Psychologist 62:259–261, 2007), the study of emotion regulation faces significant challenges that need to be addressed. In reviewing the articles in the present issue, we comment upon how researchers have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to meet these challenges. We suggest that the articles in the present volume demonstrate important conceptual and methodological advances in emotion regulation research, but that the most central problems noted by Zinbarg and Mineka have yet to be fully remedied. In highlighting both the progress made and problems faced by the field of emotion regulation, we suggest new directions for future research in this area.     

Do Automatic Self-Associations Relate to Suicidal Ideation?

Dysfunctional self-schemas are assumed to play an important role in suicidal ideation. According to recent information-processing models, it is important to differentiate between ‘explicit’ beliefs and automatic associations. Explicit beliefs stem from the weighting of propositions and their corresponding ‘truth’ values, while automatic associations reflect more simple associations in memory. Both types of associations are assumed to have different functional properties and both may be involved in suicidal ideation. Thus far, studies into self-schemas and suicidal ideation focused on the more explicit, consciously accessible traces of self-schemas and predominantly relied on self-report questionnaires or interviews. To complement these ‘explicit’ findings and more directly tap into self-schemas, this study investigated automatic self-associations in a large scale community sample that was part of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA). The results showed that automatic self-associations of depression and anxiety were indeed significantly related to suicidal ideation and past suicide attempt. Moreover, the interactions between automatic self-depressive (anxious) associations and explicit self-depressive (anxious) beliefs explained additional variance over and above explicit self-beliefs. Together these results provide an initial insight into one explanation of why suicidal patients might report difficulties in preventing and managing suicidal thoughts.     

What Variables Are Associated With an Expressed Wish to Kill a Doctor in Community and Injured Patient Samples?

Working in a health care setting has been identified as a primary risk factor for violent assault, which is often perpetrated by patients. Patient dangerousness is a multidimensional phenomenon, which may include violent ideation, homicidal planning, a history of violent acts, or overt threatening behavior. Although the verbal report of thoughts of killing a doctor is only one of many risk factors for patient dangerousness, reports of homicidal ideation are widely regarded as being sufficient to warrant concern, and to indicate a need for further assessment of the patient. In this study, 2264 subjects (1329 healthy community subjects, 158 non-healthy community subjects, and 777 rehabilitation patients) were asked if they had a desire to kill a doctor that they had seen. Subjects responding positively to this item were compared to subjects responding negatively to the item using all available demographic variables and BHI 2 scales using chi-square or t-test. Significant variables (p < .01) were then utilized in a logistic regression to generate a model for this wish. Three variables significantly predicted this wish: the Doctor Dissatisfaction (p < .001) and Borderline (p < .001) scales of the BHI 2, and injury-related litigation status (p = .002). The presence of one of these variables, especially Doctor Dissatisfaction, should prompt a more thorough assessment of potential danger to healthcare workers.     

Child abuse and negative explicit and automatic self-associations: The cognitive scars of emotional maltreatment

Individuals reporting Childhood Abuse (CA) (i.e., emotional neglect, emotional-, physical- and sexual-abuse) are marked by increased explicit (i.e. self-reported) negative self-associations, and an increased risk to develop depression or anxiety disorders. Automatic self-associations might play an important role in the development and maintenance of affective disorders after exposure to CA, since automatic associations are assumed to be involved in uncontrolled (spontaneous) affective behavior. This study examined whether individuals reporting a history of CA show stronger automatic (and explicit) self-depression and/or self-anxiety associations than individuals who report no CA in a large cohort study (Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA), n = 2981). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was utilized to assess automatic self-depression and self-anxiety associations. We found that CA was associated with enhanced automatic (and explicit) self-depression and self-anxiety associations. Additionally, when compared to physical- and sexual-abuse, Childhood Emotional Maltreatment (CEM; emotional abuse and emotional neglect) had the strongest link with enhanced automatic (and explicit) self-depression and self-anxiety associations. In addition, automatic and explicit negative self-associations partially mediated the association between CEM and depressive or anxious symptomatology. Implications regarding the importance of CA, and CEM in particular will be discussed.     

Belonging Without Belonging: Utilizing Evangelical Self-Identification to Analyze Political Attitudes and Preferences

Research typically defines evangelical belonging as affiliation with an evangelical denomination, but this approach excludes many self-identified evangelicals, even though previous studies of religious groups find that self-identification is a powerful predictor of political preferences. Using data from the National Survey of Religion and Politics, we investigate the usefulness of self-identification for classifying evangelicals. The effects of three types of evangelical belonging (religious tradition-only, self-identification-only, and a combination of religious tradition and self-identification) on respondents' political attitudes, party identification, and vote choice suggest that religious tradition is a good predictor of political attitudes while self-identification is a good predictor of party identification. We conclude that self-identification and tradition are both important to understanding evangelicalism and politics in America.     

The costs of caring: Gender identification increases threat following exposure to sexism

The current research examined whether group identification moderates the extent to which perceived ingroup discrimination is threatening, as indexed by physiological and self-report measures. Women read and gave a speech summarizing an article describing sexism as prevalent or rare. They then completed a distraction task and sat for a recovery period. Cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) was used to index threat experienced on an automatic level and self-reported anxiety was used to index threat experienced on a controlled level. Regardless of group identification, participants in the prevalent sexism (vs. rare sexism) condition exhibited a pattern of CVR consistent with threat during the speech and reported greater anxiety post-speech. During recovery, however, highly identified participants in the prevalent sexism condition exhibited a sustained threat pattern of CVR and reported higher anxiety post-recovery compared to low identifiers. High group identification may heighten the psychological and physiological burden of discrimination.