Religious Diversity and Community Volunteerism Among Asian Americans

We examine whether religious membership and participation foster community volunteerism among a religiously diverse group of Asian Americans. We use data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS), the only data set that contains both a large, national sample of Asian Americans and detailed questions on religious and civic participation. Asian-American Protestants, Catholics, and adherents of non-Christian religions are involved in community volunteerism to varying degrees. Surprisingly, however, fewer Hindus and Buddhists volunteer when compared to the nonaffiliated. We use these results to propose theoretical concepts that take into account the impact of a religion's structure as well as the double-minority status faced by nonwhite and non-Christian Asian Americans on the likelihood of volunteering. Our findings indicate that accepted predictors of community volunteerism may operate differently among new nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the general U.S. population; this provides building blocks for future research on religion and civic participation among nonwhite and non-Christian populations.     

ENDURANTISM, DIACHRONIC VAGUENESS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MANY

Abstract: A plausible desideratum for an account of the nature of objects, at, and across time, is that it accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness without locating vagueness in the world. A series of arguments have attempted to show that while universalist perdurantism – which combines a perdurantist account of persistence with an unrestricted mereological account of composition – meets this desideratum, endurantist accounts do not. If endurantists reject unrestricted composition then they must hold that vagueness is ontological. But if they embrace unrestricted composition they are faced with the problem of the many, and cannot plausibly accommodate vagueness. This paper disambiguates two related sub-problems of the problem of the many, and argues that universalist perdurantism is not superior to universalist endurantism with respect to either of these.     

AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF A MODEL OF RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION

This investigation synthesized research from several related areas to produce a model of resistance to persuasion based upon variables not considered by earlier congruity and inoculation models. Support was found for the prediction that the kind of critical response set induced and the target of the criticism are mediators of resistance to persuasion. The more critical acts are focused on arguments presented in a persuasive message, the more likely that the critical act will not be distracting and therefore promote counterarguing which will lead people to be resistant to subsequent persuasive messages arguing on the same side of given attitudinal issue. When criticism is less central to message variables and focuses on speaker and/or delivery characteristics, distraction occurs which decreases the probability of counterarguing and induces people to be vulnerable to forthcoming persuasive messages. This is especially true when negative criticism of speaker characteristics reduces threat to present attitudes and reduces motivation to counterargue to protect privately held beliefs. A completely counterbalanced design employing several manipulation checks was created to rule out competing explanations for differential resistance to persuasion.     

“A Matter of Life and Death”: Kawabata on the Value of Art after the Atomic Bombings

This article explores the possible interpretations—and the implications of those interpretations—of a comment about the importance of art made by Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972), later the first Japanese Nobel laureate for literature: that “looking at old works of art is a matter of life and death.” (In 1949, Kawabata visited Hiroshima in his capacity as president of the Japan literary society P.E.N. to inspect the damage caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that helped end World War II. On his way back to his home in Kamakura, he stopped in Kyoto. He came under severe criticism for “sightseeing” at such a time. This comment was his response.) The introduction explains why we should take him seriously as a commentator on art. The body of the article examines why our looking at art might be more, not less, important after the post‐War situation, the kinds of art Kawabata might have meant, why some possibilities are more likely than others, and how they differ in what they offer us and the value of art under conditions of trauma and mass trauma.     

Measuring what counts: Development of a new four‐category measure of adult attachment

Measurement issues have plagued attachment research over the past 30 years. Concerns range from limitations of the original paragraph measure (C. Hazan & P. R. Shaver, 1987), low reliability of continuous scales of Bartholomew's 4‐category measure, limited interpretation of the 2 dimensions of the Experience of Close Relationships and the Experience of Close Relationships‐Revised (ECR/ECR‐R; K. A. Brennan, C. L. Clark, & P. R. Shaver, 1998; R. C. Fraley, N. G. Waller, & K. A. Brennan, 2000), and time‐consuming coding of attachment interviews. In this article, a revision of the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) is introduced. The new 4‐category scales were found to have improved internal consistency when compared with the original RSQ scales as well as moderate to high test–retest reliability and good construct validity, thereby providing an alternative measure for researchers who are interested in assessing the effects of the 4‐category model of attachment.