The Liberalization of Young Evangelicals: A Research Note

Media outlets and observers of American religion suggest that young evangelicals are retreating from the ranks of the “Christian right” and are embracing more liberal positions on controversial social issues. We test this hypothesis using the Baylor Religion Survey. We examine two separate measures of evangelical identity as well as a wide variety of political identifications and attitudes. Our study indicates that young evangelicals (1) are significantly more likely than older evangelicals to think that more should be done to protect the environment; (2) hold views similar to older evangelicals regarding abortion, same‐sex marriage, stem cell research, marijuana use, government welfare spending, spending on the nation's health, and the war in Iraq; and (3) remain significantly more conservative than nonevangelicals on these same social issues. We find no strong evidence to support the notion that young evangelicals are retreating from traditional positions or increasingly adopting more liberal positions on hot‐button or controversial social issues.     

Withdrawal Versus Reversal: A Necessary Distinction?

In the behavior analysis literature, the terms withdrawal and reversal are widely used to refer to various iterations of the basic A‐B‐A or A‐B‐A‐B experimental design structure. Although these terms were initially used to label two distinct but closely related experimental designs, it now appears that many researchers have come to use these terms interchangeably. A review of major behavior analytic journals published between 2009 and 2013 reveals a strong preference among researchers for use of the term reversal in labeling the design described in the publication, whether or not that design is characterized by the specific features initially associated with the reversal design. This paper describes the origin of this definitional distinction and reviews the case for abolishing that distinction. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Four Gods” in Maximum Security Prison: Images of God,Religiousness, and Worldviews Among Inmates

This paper extends research on images of God, which prior researchers based mostly on national survey data, to a study of offenders in prison. We first explore whether the distribution of Froese and Bader’s (America’s four gods: What we say about god–& what that says about us, Oxford University Press, New York 2010) four images of God among prison inmates is similar to that in the general population. We then examine whether an inmate’s image of God is associated with the inmate’s worldviews: beliefs and attitudes toward the law, other inmates, moral responsibility, and ultimate meaning and purpose in life. Finally, we test whether an inmate’s belief in a forgiving God and religiousness explain the association. We analyzed data from a survey of 2249 inmates at America’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. We found the distribution of God-images among inmates was the same as that in national samples in terms of rank order. As hypothesized, we also found inmates with an image of an engaged God tended to report lower levels of legal cynicism and sense of illegitimacy of punishment and higher levels of collective efficacy, existential belief, and moral responsibility than those with images of a disengaged God or no God. Finally, we found an inmate’s belief in a forgiving God and religiousness to mediate partly relationships between images of God and the inmate’s worldviews.     

Longitudinal Effects of Latino Parent Cultural Stress,Depressive Symptoms,and Family Functioning on Youth Emotional Well‐Being and Health Risk Behaviors

U.S. Latino parents can face cultural stressors in the form of acculturative stress, perceived discrimination, and a negative context of reception. It stands to reason that these cultural stressors may negatively impact Latino youth's emotional well‐being and health risk behaviors by increasing parents' depressive symptoms and compromising the overall functioning of the family. To test this possibility, we analyzed data from a six‐wave longitudinal study with 302 recently immigrated (<5 years in the United States) Latino parents (74% mothers, M_age = 41.09 years) and their adolescent children (47% female, M_age = 14.51 years). Results of a cross‐lagged analysis indicated that parent cultural stress predicted greater parent depressive symptoms (and not vice versa). Both parent cultural stress and depressive symptoms, in turn, predicted lower parent‐reported family functioning, which mediated the links from parent cultural stress and depressive symptoms to youth alcohol and cigarette use. Parent cultural stress also predicted lower youth‐reported family functioning, which mediated the link from parent cultural stress to youth self‐esteem. Finally, mediation analyses indicated that parent cultural stress predicted youth alcohol use by a way of parent depressive symptoms and parent‐reported family functioning. Our findings point to parent depressive symptoms and family functioning as key mediators in the links from parent cultural stress to youth emotional well‐being and health risk behaviors. We discuss implications for research and preventive interventions.     

Community,Spiritual Traditions,and Disasters in Chinese Society

Pastoral Psychology - This article posits a deeply contextual and communal therapy as the best path to a victim’s reconstruction of a sense of ‘home.’ The authors take seriously...     

社群、精神性传统和中国社会中的灾难(英文)

本文假定深切的处境观念和社群疗法是受害者"家庭"观念重建的最好途径。本文作者认真响应中国心理学会主席张侃的号召,重视中国的本土资源和精神遗产对于中国人在心理治疗中作用。本文沿袭了沃尔什将重建社群作为缓解创伤和灾难效果的四种方式:分享对创伤事件的认知,分享丧失和存活的经验,社群的重新组织和关系的重新建立。有人认为在灾难之后,精神性也可以在意义和社群的复原中扮演着积极的作用,前提是尊重信仰,鼓励信仰者使用自己的信仰语言,而不是把信仰当作工具来寻求心理健康。文中引用的例子包括俄罗斯乌克兰人中的门诺派教徒在社群/宗教重建中的努力,还有中国人对2008年5月12日汶川大地震中对灾难的回应方式。     

Does stress-related growth involve constructive changes in coping intentions?

The theorized link between stress-related growth (SRG) and enhanced coping intentions was examined in 91 young adults. Participants reported their most stressful event in the past year, how they coped with it, their perceived SRG from this event, and how they would intend to cope should this same event happen again. In general, SRG was unrelated to intended changes in coping. Participants then read three vignettes describing stressful events. For each, they imagined that it was currently occurring and reported their coping plans. Whereas SRG was positively related to some adaptive coping plans, it was also related to several maladaptive strategies, inconsistent with coping enhancement. Overall, findings suggest that SRG might represent retrospective positive reappraisals vs. growth, as has been shown for the related construct of posttraumatic growth (PTG). Implications for the validity of SRG and directions for future research are discussed.     

The effects of varying levels of treatment integrity on child compliance during treatment with a three-step prompting procedure

The effects of three levels of treatment integrity (100%, 50%, and 0%) on child compliance were evaluated in the context of the implementation of a three-step prompting procedure. Two typically developing preschool children participated in the study. After baseline data on compliance to one of three common demands were collected, a therapist implemented the three-step prompting procedure at three different integrity levels. One integrity level was associated with each demand. The effects of the integrity levels were examined using multielement designs. The results indicate that compliance varied according to the level of treatment integrity that was in place.