Psychological Type and Attitude towards Celtic Christianity among Committed Churchgoers in the United Kingdom: An Empirical Study

This article takes the burgeoning interest in Celtic Christianity as a key example of the way in which churches may be responding to the changing spiritual and religious landscape in the United Kingdom today and examines the power of psychological type theory to account for variation in the attitude of committed churchgoers to this innovation. Data provided by a sample of 248 Anglican clergy and lay church officers (who completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales together with the Attitude toward Celtic Christianity Scale) demonstrated that intuitive types, feeling types, and perceiving types reported a more positive attitude towards Celtic Christianity than sensing types, thinking types, and judging types. These findings are interpreted to analyse the appeal of Celtic Christianity and to suggest why some committed churchgoers may find this innovation less attractive.     

Generation and associative encoding in young and old adults: the effect of the strength of association between cues and targets on a cued recall task

The generation effect (i.e., better recall of the generated items than the read items) was investigated with a between-list design in young and elderly participants. The generation task difficulty was manipulated by varying the strength of association between cues and targets. Overall, strong associates were better recalled than weak associates. However, the results showed different generation effect patterns according to strength of association and age, with a greater generation effect for weak associates in younger adults only. These findings suggest that generating weak associates leads to more elaborated encoding, but that elderly adults cannot use this elaborated encoding as well as younger adults to recall the target words at test.     

Living in several languages: implications for therapy

Bilingualism and multilingualism have mainly been neglected in psychotherapy. This paper is based on qualitative research of subjective experiences of living in more than one language, using a combined grounded theory and discursive approach, which raises significant issues for therapy. These individuals experience themselves very differently in their different languages, and construct their languages differently. Languages acquire meanings in socio-political contexts as well as in local personal ones, and encode different concepts and notions of personhood. Issues of language choice within families and what it is seen to accomplish are discussed. Mothers and fathers view this issue differently. The paper argues for the importance of taking into account the differences languages bring for individuals, particularly in the context of colonialism and racism. Asking about families' experiences of their languages is a fruitful way to explore cultural meanings. Multilingualism is a resource for mental flexibility and creativity, but there are challenges in enabling living with its multiplicities.     

Personality traits in patients with narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a lifelong disorder with the main symptoms of sleep attacks and cataplexy. In this study 49 narcoleptic patients were investigated with a battery of personality inventories, covering the following personality dimensions: anxiety-neuroticism, extraversion and socialization. The results were compared with three groups: normal subject, psychiatric inpatients with anxiety and outpatients with psychosomatic complaints. The main aim was to evaluate a clinical impression of a high degree of extraversion in narcoleptic patients, which according to Eysenck's model could be related to a disturbance in the arousal regulation. Narcoleptic patients had higher anxiety-neuroticism scores than normal individuals, particularly in terms of Somatic Anxiety. They had unexpectedly low scores in some socialization scales, and were contrary to our hypothesis slightly lower in the extraversion variables, than the comparison groups. The high scores in anxiety-neuroticism personality scales may depend on an anxiety-provoking effect of central stimulant drugs and/or a lability of the autonomic regulation associated with the disorder. Further, the strain caused by the narcoleptic symptoms may result in high scores in anxiety-neuroticism scales and low scores in socialization scales, via social-learning mechanisms. However, there may also be a coupling between the genetics of narcolepsy and biologically based personality traits.     

Does “Intelligent Design” Have a Chance? An Essay Review

A number of authors have agued the case that there is empirical evidence that the universe (or particular configurations within it) must be the outcome of intelligent design. Recent books by William Dembski and Dean Overman, though different in style and level of argumentation, reach a similar conclusion: the universe, or certain forms within it, cannot be explained without appeal to design as a mode of causation. But exactly what is the operative definition for intelligent design in these works? And how convincing is their case for the necessity of appealing to this type of design in causal explanations?     

Some nonmasking auditory postsignal effects

Observers were asked to detect a 20-msec segment of a sinusoidal signal masked by a band-limited white noise. A postsignal decrease in the spectrum level of the noise within the critical band of the signal enhanced the detectability of that signal if the decrease occurred within approximately 25 msec following signal termination. Postsignal decreases outside the critical band of the signal, and decreases within the critical band delayed longer than approximately 40 msec, reduced the detectability of the signal for decrease delays up to between approximately 150 and 400 msec, depending on the spectral characteristics of the decrease. Comparisons with typical backward masking results indicate probable common factors of short-term temporal summation and longer term attention.     

The industrial prestige hierarchy

The major concerns of this research were to determine the prestige evaluations of selected industries by individuals representing diverse groups, and to compare the results with a previous study. Questionnaires were administered to five occupational subgroups (accountants, personnel managers, secretaries, electricians, security guards) and two university groups, one composed of white students, the other of black students. A total of 400 respondents indicated their prestige ratings of 30 industries in terms of a five-point scale. The major findings may be summarized as follows: (1) the industries were perceived to be arranged hierarchically as to prestige but many of the differences were not statistically significant; (2) various subgroups of the sample shared a closely similar evaluation pattern; and (3) industrial ratings had changed but little through time and did not vary significantly from one geographical area to another.