Does Duration of Deregulated Religious Markets Affect Church Attendance? Evidence from 26 Religious Markets in Europe and North America Between 1981 and 2006

This study tests the deregulation hypothesis of religious market theory in 26 European and Northern American countries by examining differences in religious involvement between and within countries. The deregulation hypothesis, which is assumed to be universally valid, predicts that religious involvement is higher in deregulated religious markets. Moreover, countries having deregulated religious markets for a longer period of time are supposed to have higher levels of involvement. Therefore, we test the duration hypothesis. This test is important, as it also has been argued that it may take time for deregulation to have an effect on religious involvement. Multilevel analysis on the stacked European and World Value Surveys of 1981, 1990, 2000, and 2006 show that deregulation fosters church attendance, but duration of deregulation does not increase church attendance. Although the deregulation hypothesis cannot be rejected, we find that modernization corrodes church attendance to a larger extent than deregulation can stimulate church attendance.     

Race and sex in a lifetime

Abstract: The Jungian analysts who participated in the writing of this paper 1 explicitly or implicitly address issues of social and political stasis, retrogression and change via their particular usages of the concept of the transcendent function. Singer proposes that the transcendent function is a term that is usually applied to individuals in whom symbolic material appears that suggests the reconciling of opposites, leading to psycho‐spiritual growth. He also looks at the notion of the transcendent function as it can appear in a similar way in the collective psyche. In addition, he gives attention to the opposite phenomenon—what might be called the descendent function—as it appears in the collective psyche and its leadership, wherein symbolic material can create the division of groups of people into opposites, mobilizing destructive rather than transformative experience. Meador states that Jung designated the mediating process of assimilating unconscious images and ideas into consciousness as the transcendent function. Just as this synthesizing process can produce insight in the individual, it can also be applied to changes in collective society. Embedded collective assumptions tend to shift when opposites collide, as they did, for example, in the turmoils of the 1960s. Her contribution focuses on the recent revolution in racial and sexual attitudes as the product of a collective struggle between certain ingrained social mores from the past and conflicting new points of view. Samuels’ conclusion is that the concept of the transcendent function has little value with respect to political problems. His contribution focuses on: (i) The limitations of using ideas (such as the transcendent function) derived from analysis with individuals in furtherance of an understanding of social and political phenomena. (ii) The specific problem of a lack of credible psycho‐political models for social progress and regress—he argues that the transcendent function is not useful in this regard. (iii) The question of political aggression, violence and conflict in society is explored from the standpoint of the transcendent function so as to investigate its possible role in the management of political conflict. Samuels severely criticizes what he terms ‘triangulation’ and ‘hyper‐reflection’ on the part of analysts who engage with political debates and issues. (iv) Leadership is examined from the standpoint of the transcendent function which, again, does not seem pertinent. Rather, new discoveries in family psychology about the role of the father have greater possibilities as a basis for new thinking about leadership.     

Procedural fairness and endorsement of prototypical leaders: Leader benevolence or follower control?

This research explored why strongly identifying followers endorse prototypical leaders by addressing the role of procedural fairness in this process. We introduced the distinction between procedural fairness rules relating to leader benevolence (i.e., whether the leader supports the group’s interests) and follower control (i.e., whether followers can influence the leader’s decisions). We predicted that strongly identifying group members endorse prototypical leaders because they perceive such leaders as acting in line with benevolence related fairness rules rather than because such leaders are perceived as giving followers control. An organizational field study and a laboratory experiment revealed support for these ideas. Our results thus provide insights into why prototypical leaders are endorsed among strongly identifying followers. They also have implications for the procedural fairness literature in showing that frequently studied procedural fairness rules (e.g., voice) do not explain endorsement of leaders believed to support the group’s interests.     

Proximal antecedents and correlates of adopted error approach: a self-regulatory perspective

The current study aims to further investigate earlier established advantages of an error mastery approach over an error aversion approach. The two main purposes of the study relate to (1) self-regulatory traits (i.e., goal orientation and action-state orientation) that may predict which error approach (mastery or aversion) is adopted, and (2) proximal, psychological processes (i.e., self-focused attention and failure attribution) that relate to adopted error approach. In the current study participants' goal orientation and action-state orientation were assessed, after which they worked on an error-prone task. Results show that learning goal orientation related to error mastery, while state orientation related to error aversion. Under a mastery approach, error occurrence did not result in cognitive resources "wasted" on self-consciousness. Rather, attention went to internal-unstable, thus controllable, improvement oriented causes of error. Participants that had adopted an aversion approach, in contrast, experienced heightened self-consciousness and attributed failure to internal-stable or external causes. These results imply that when working on an error-prone task, people should be stimulated to take on a mastery rather than an aversion approach towards errors.     

A PARADIGM FOR OPERANT CONDITIONING IN BLOW FLIES (PHORMIA TERRAE NOVAE ROBINEAU‐DESVOIDY, 1830)

An operant conditioning situation for the blow fly (Protophormia terrae novae) is described. Individual flies are trained to enter and reenter a hole as the operant response. Only a few sessions of contingent reinforcement are required to increase response rates. When the response is no longer followed by food, the rate of entering the hole decreases. Control procedures revealed that rate of responding is not a simple overall result of feeding or of aging. The flies entered into the hole only if the response was required to obtain the food.     

The Validity and Structure of Culture‐Level Personality Scores: Data From Ratings of Young Adolescents

ABSTRACT We examined properties of culture‐level personality traits in ratings of targets (N=5,109) ages 12 to 17 in 24 cultures. Aggregate scores were generalizable across gender, age, and relationship groups and showed convergence with culture‐level scores from previous studies of self‐reports and observer ratings of adults, but they were unrelated to national character stereotypes. Trait profiles also showed cross‐study agreement within most cultures, 8 of which had not previously been studied. Multidimensional scaling showed that Western and non‐Western cultures clustered along a dimension related to Extraversion. A culture‐level factor analysis replicated earlier findings of a broad Extraversion factor but generally resembled the factor structure found in individuals. Continued analysis of aggregate personality scores is warranted.