After Said,After Ayodhya: New Challenges for the study of Indian Religions

Gerald James Larson, India's Agony Over Religion. Albany, New York, SUNY Press 1995. ISBN 0-7914-2411-11 (cl), 0-7914-2412-X (pa). Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1994. ISBN 0-520-08220-6 (cl), 0-520-08256-7 (pa).     

Critical Hopefulness: A Person-Centered Analysis of the Intersection of Cognitive and Emotional Empowerment

Leaders in struggles for social justice agree on the importance and the difficulty of maintaining hopefulness while developing critical awareness of social issues. Research has indicated that the analogous components of psychological empowerment (emotional and cognitive) often do not co-vary across populations. This study used a person-centered analytic approach, latent class analysis, to identify subpopulations of participants (n = 1,322) according to the cognitive and emotional components of psychological empowerment. Four distinct sub-groups emerged: those who were relatively (1) critical but alienated, (2) uncritical but hopeful, (3) uncritical and alienated, or (4) critical and hopeful. These clusters were then examined for demographic differences and relationships with a set of conceptually relevant variables including social capital, psychological sense of community, openness, organizational participation and mental wellbeing. Results shed light on the complexity of empowerment processes and yield implications for ongoing community research and action.     

Effects of Multiple Maternal Relationship Transitions on Offspring Antisocial Behavior in Childhood and Adolescence: A Cousin-Comparison Analysis

Previous studies of the association between multiple parental relationship transitions (i.e., when a parent begins or terminates an intimate relationship involving cohabitation) and offspring antisocial behavior have varied in their efforts to rule out confounding influences, such as parental antisocial behavior and low income. They also have been limited in the representativeness of their samples. Thus, it remains unclear to what degree parents’ multiple relationship transitions have independent effects on children’s antisocial behavior. Analyses were conducted using data on 8,652 6–9-year-old, 6,911 10–13-year-old, and 6,495 14–17-year-old offspring of a nationally representative sample of U.S. women. Cousin-comparisons were used in combination with statistical covariates to evaluate the associations between maternal relationship transitions and offspring antisocial behavior in childhood and adolescence. Cousin-comparisons suggested that associations between maternal relationship transitions and antisocial behavior in childhood and early adolescence are largely explained by confounding factors. In contrast, the associations between maternal relationship transitions and offspring delinquency in late adolescence were robust to measured and unmeasured confounds. The present findings suggest that interventions aimed at reducing exposure to parental relationship transitions or addressing the psychosocial consequences of exposure to parental relationship transitions could reduce risk for offspring delinquency in late adolescence.     

Predictors of Entry into Age-Discordant Relationships Among Adolescent Girls

Teenage girls in age-discordant relationships remain of concern for healthy development and well-being. We examine whether factors from several sociological frameworks—self-esteem, deviance, social ecology, family cohesion, and religious involvement—predict entry into such relationships. With longitudinal data on 1,537 adolescent girls, we use structural equation modeling to assess risk and protective factors by age group. Results indicate that few social factors predict entry to such relationships; only religious involvement for the youngest adolescents and self-esteem for middle adolescents predict entry. While adolescent girls who date older males are largely like their peers, any impact of social factors may vary by the developmental stage that adolescent girls occupy.     

Transhumanism and Roman Catholicism: Imagined and Real Tensions

Abstract

Transhumanists have asserted that religious people would both oppose life extension and allowing people with extended lives to die. In this paper, coming from a Roman Catholic perspective, I refute four myths associated with these claims: that the Church materially opposes life extension, that it conceptually opposes the very idea of life extension, that it opposes human genetic manipulation, and that it opposes letting people die in hospitals. I then propose that there are four real tensions that are much more significant: that material immortality is highly improbable, that injustice and inequality are major concerns, that transhuman omnipotence is impossible, and that utopianism is extremely dangerous.     

Preface

Abstract

Few phenomena are as widely experienced across different individuals, cultures, and contexts as that of traumatic stress. Whether as victims, perpetrators, supporters, or simply observers, most if not all people can identify to some extent with the psychological and physical consequences produced by traumatic events. Such incidents are as varied as the individuals who must deal with them: The grief produced by the sudden death of a loved one, the self-doubt present in a victim's response to rape, the loss of autonomy following a debilitating injury, and the absence of social identity in the wake of genocidal terror are just a few of the experiences that make up the subject matter of traumatic stress. The consequences of such events also reach beyond the individuals who directly suffer these ordeals. Those who interact with the victims as they attempt to overcome the traumas often endure their own costs. The child who survives the death of a sibling does so in the difficult context of the parents' grief. Individuals close to a victim of severe physical injury frequently must take on new responsibilities as they deal with a friend whose capabilities and limitations have been forever altered. The family of a man who has lost his beloved wife must attempt to find solace for themselves while still offering comfort to the one who was closest to her. The consequences of traumatic events, while certainly devastating for the most immediate victims, are therefore also experienced by the people in the social network that surrounds those victims.     

Examination of muscularity and body fat depictions in magazines that target heterosexual and gay men

Previous content analyses of magazine images have typically examined within genres but failed to include comparisons between publications intended for various populations. The purpose of this study was to examine depictions of muscularity and thinness of male images in several widely distributed magazines that target male audiences from a variety of genres. Twenty-three magazine titles with the highest circulation rates that targeted heterosexual men, gay men, and general audiences were selected for image analyses. We found that magazines that target gay male audiences depicted images of men who were thinner in comparison to magazines targeting heterosexual men. Both gay and heterosexual magazines depicted male images with greater muscularity than magazines intended for general audiences. Differences in male image depictions in magazines may contribute to the promotion of an unattainable body ideal in some subgroups of gay culture.     

Positive explorers: modeling dynamic control in normal aging

Situations in which there are multiple changes occurring all at once and which demand complex decisions to be made are common throughout life, but little is known about how normal aging influences performance on these types of scenarios. To determine performance differences associated with normal aging, we test older and younger adults in a dynamic control task. The task involves the control of a single output variable over time via multiple and uncertain input controls. The Single Limited Input, Dynamic Exploratory Responses (SLIDER) computational model, is implemented to determine the behavioral characteristics associated with normal aging in a dynamic control task. Model-based analysis demonstrates a unique performance signature profile associated with normal aging. Specifically, older adults exhibit a positivity effect in which they are more influenced by positively valenced feedback, congruent with previous research, as well as enhanced exploratory behavior.