AN ACQUAINTANCE RAPE PREVENTION PROGRAM

The present study investigated the effects of an acquaintance-rape prevention program on college students' attitudes toward rape and attitudes toward women, perceptions of acquaintance-rape scenarios, and rape empathy. Participants were led to believe that they were participating in two separate experiments in order to decrease demand characteristics. Results indicated that intervention group men and women became more empathic toward the victim than the control group, postintervention. Within the intervention group, men changed more in their attitudes toward women postintervention than did women. In addition to positive attitude change, results with the date-rape scenarios suggested that intervention-group men became more certain of their definitions of rape situations postintervention. Prior to the intervention, women were generally more certain of their definitions than were men, with intervention-group men approximating women's responses postintervention.     

The Political Ecology of Dignity: Human Dignity and the Inevitable Returns of Animality

Human dignity names a two‐tier political ecology: one moral‐political community whose members bear a special status of inviolability, and another larger community where violence and degradation are routine. Because ecological relations are never uni‐directional, the routinized violence that “belongs” in interactions with nonhuman animals returns, normalizing violence across gendered, racialized, and politicized lines of human difference. An account of dignity that begins from creaturely vulnerability rather than anthropological exceptionalism not only better expresses key theological insights of the Christian tradition, it also resists the repressed and disavowed violence generated by prevalent accounts of dignity.     

An investigation of persuasion and sentencing severity with mock juries

The extent to which the personal characteristics of individual mock jurors affect participation and influence with other jurors within the deliberation process was the focus of this investigation. A predeliberation locus of control measure, along with two conditions of jury composition (heterogenous vs homogenous with respect to the locus of control measure) were used to investigate interactions among sentencing severity, persuasiveness in deliberation, and demographic characteristics among 96 jurors. Results indicated that group sentences were significantly more severe than predeliberation sentences and that postdeliberation shifts were significantly more pronounced for the heterogenous juries than for the homogeneous juries.     

Religious orientation and coping with cancer

In this study we investigated the role of religious orientation in coping with stresses associated with cancer. A measure of daily coping and the Religious Orientation scale were administered to forty hematology-oncology patients in order to examine frequency of eight coping responses across religious orientations. It was found that proreligious and intrinsic participants used religion significantly more often than nonreligious and extrinsic types to cope with stresses associated with their cancer. We concluded that religious orientation and commitment influence the coping process, and suggest that religious commitment be included in studies of coping with cancer.     

A Challenge to the Integrity of Creation: An African Woman's Perspective

Is JPIC a compelling process calling churches and Christians to commitment and involvement within the life of the world? Or, as some critics claim, is JPIC a rather a handy but not too practical theoretical construct within which to house the various environment and development commitments of the ecumenical movement? These are ongoing and helpful questions which are not new to the JPIC process. They are important, and necessary to keep in the forefront of debate and discussions in churches, for they point to a central truth — that JPIC is effective only to the extent that it makes a difference in the lives of people. The wealth of theological reflection and socio-political assessment of the JPIC process, as evidenced by the articles of this issue of The Ecumenical Review, are meaningful precisely in relation to their capacity to form and inform the understandings and actions of churches and Christians in the world. For in the last analysis, JPIC can only be measured in terms of human life, and of flesh and blood. Therefore, it seems worthwhile, and perhaps necessary, within a journal of theological reflection which has as its focus the JPIC process, to include a testimony to JPIC as it is lived out at the grassroots level. We know that women bear a disproportionate impact of the effects of poverty and unjust economic systems. Women too experience a disproportionate impact of the effects of racism. As bearers of life into the world, and as the primary nurturers of future generations, women claim a special place in relation to the environment. It is appropriate, therefore, that Cecilia Asogwa inserts into these JPIC reflections a personal account of a community of rural women in Africa who begin to work together in an economic self-help group, and in so doing discover themselves involved as active participants and leaders in their community. For these women, JPIC has meant personal and community empowerment which they have experienced as part of the healing of creation.     

SLEEP DEPRIVATION,ALLERGY SYMPTOMS,AND NEGATIVELY REINFORCED PROBLEM BEHAVIOR

We studied the relation between the presence versus the absence of sleep deprivation or allergy symptoms and the rate and function of problem behavior. Three students whose problem behavior was negatively reinforced by escape from instruction were studied across several weeks using analogue functional analyses. Our results indicated that the extraexperimental events were associated with (a) termination of instruction functioning as a negative reinforcer, (b) increased rates of negatively reinforced problem behavior, or (c) increased rates of problem behavior across all conditions.     

Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: An Examination of Construct Validity

Within the past few years, several studies have used the Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment Scales (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1984, 1991) to assess organizational commitment. The purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate the body of evidence relevant to the construct validity of these measures. Although some empirical questions remain at issue, the overall results strongly support the continued use of the scales in substantive research.