Biblical Fidelity of Christian School Textbooks

A reasonable expectation of textbooks used in Christian schools is that they should regularly incorporate biblical content. It is also reasonable to expect the biblical content to be integrated—not segregated—to influence matters such as worldview, biblical relevance, character, and integrative skills. This expectation was tested via a representative sampling of 15 texts across a span of elementary, middle, and high school grades and representative content areas from eight Christian schools in the eastern Virginia region. Important findings include: close to half the texts used in the schools were from non-Christian publishers; textbooks from Christian publishers were predominantly from only two companies; the adequacy of textbook worldview scores is not in alignment with research showing major student deficiency in Christian worldviews; and approximately half of the scores for Christian textbooks were below the minimally acceptable level.     

Dedicate Your Life to the Company! A Terror Management Perspective on Organizations

Terror management research has examined many institutions and beliefs, which provide people with a sense of psychological security against death awareness. However, one important area has yet to receive attention: the workplace. For many employees, corporate culture is not only connected to earning a salary, but also to a sense of security and even personal transcendence. We present evidence that pro‐company judgments can serve as psychological defenses under existential threat. In Study 1, following mortality salience, employees gave a more favorable evaluation of the company‐praising essay and a more negative evaluation of the critical one. In Study 2, employees and students at a German university were more likely to endorse aspects of organizational culture under mortality salience.     

Group Identification and University Involvement1

Campus involvement has been identified as an important predictor of academic persistence and success. We propose a group identification approach to campus involvement and present the results of 3 studies. Study 1 established that group identity was strongly related to campus involvement. Study 2 determined that group identity mediated the relationship between student residency (on‐campus vs. off‐campus) and campus involvement. Study 3 replicated the prior results, but used a longitudinal design to help rule out alternative explanations. We conclude that group identification, particularly the affective component, plays an important role in campus involvement, and offer suggestions for enhancing group identification and for further research.     

Is Longino's Conception of Objectivity Feminist?

Helen Longino's account of objectivity has been highly regarded by both feminist and mainstream philosophers of science. However, I have encountered three feminist philosophers who have all offered one especially compelling feminist critique of Longino's view: far from vindicating or privileging the work of feminist scientists, Longino's account actually requires the active cultivation of anti‐feminist and misogynist scientists to balance out the possibility of feminist bias. I call this objection the Nazi problem, for the particular version that claims that her view requires even the active cultivation of Nazi scientists in objective inquiry. In this paper I consider one response to the Nazi problem, which I call the good faith argument. I show that the good faith argument itself is just as objectionable, on feminist grounds, as the Nazi problem it is meant to address.     

PREDICTORS OF OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS: A META-ANALYSIS

Using the contest- and sponsored-mobility perspectives as theoretical guides, this meta-analysis reviewed 4 categories of predictors of objective and subjective career success: human capital, organizational sponsorship, sociodemographic status, and stable individual differences. Salary level and promotion served as dependent measures of objective career success, and subjective career success was represented by career satisfaction. Results demonstrated that both objective and subjective career success were related to a wide range of predictors. As a group, human capital and sociodemographic predictors generally displayed stronger relationships with objective career success, and organizational sponsorship and stable individual differences were generally more strongly related to subjective career success. Gender and time (date of the study) moderated several of the relationships examined.     

Male facial masculinity influences attributions of personality and reproductive strategy

Facial masculinity may be used as a cue in female mate choice, as it reflects the success of the male genotype in its developmental environment. Women may maximize reproductive success by using a conditional strategy favoring highly masculine facial features for short‐term relationships and feminized facial features in men for long‐term relationships. Three studies examine reactions to masculinized and feminized male facial composites. Properties of the original composite image affect ratings of critical attributes and the magnitude of the differences in ratings between versions undergoing identical processes of geometric manipulation (Study 1). Both men and women attribute personality, behavior, and mating strategies consistent with predictions derived from the good genes and mating trade‐off hypotheses (Study 2). Participants accurately grouped behavioral tendencies related to high mating effort/risky strategies and high parenting effort/risk adverse strategies and associated mating effort more so with masculinized faces and parenting effort more so with feminized faces (Study 3). These results indicate that male facial masculinity serves as a visual cue for inferring personality and reproductive strategy.