Perceptual Fluency and Judgments of Vocal Aesthetics and Stereotypicality

Research has shown that processing dynamics on the perceiver's end determine aesthetic pleasure. Specifically, typical objects, which are processed more fluently, are perceived as more attractive. We extend this notion of perceptual fluency to judgments of vocal aesthetics. Vocal attractiveness has traditionally been examined with respect to sexual dimorphism and the apparent size of a talker, as reconstructed from the acoustic signal, despite evidence that gender‐specific speech patterns are learned social behaviors. In this study, we report on a series of three experiments using 60 voices (30 females) to compare the relationship between judgments of vocal attractiveness, stereotypicality, and gender categorization fluency. Our results indicate that attractiveness and stereotypicality are highly correlated for female and male voices. Stereotypicality and categorization fluency were also correlated for male voices, but not female voices. Crucially, stereotypicality and categorization fluency interacted to predict attractiveness, suggesting the role of perceptual fluency is present, but nuanced, in judgments of human voices.     

Spiritual resources as antecedents of clergy well-being: The importance of occupationally specific variables

This study tests the job demands–resources model's proposal that the prediction of well-being at work is improved by identifying the most salient cohort-specific resources. Spiritual resources, conceptualized as a subcategory of personal resources, are identified as a salient resource for clergy, and their longitudinal influence on the occupational well-being of clergy (n = 399) is examined in three waves of data collection over an 18-month period. Results supported the antecedent role of spiritual resources in relation to well-being at work. Spiritual resources positively predicted future work engagement, which in turn predicted reduced turnover intention. The negative indirect effect of spiritual resources on turnover intention was fully mediated by work engagement. The findings support the need to identify relevant resources for specific work cohorts. For clergy, spiritual resources are important for motivation and vocational longevity, suggesting the need for spiritual interventions among this at-risk and under-researched population.     

“Four Gods” in Maximum Security Prison: Images of God,Religiousness, and Worldviews Among Inmates

This paper extends research on images of God, which prior researchers based mostly on national survey data, to a study of offenders in prison. We first explore whether the distribution of Froese and Bader’s (America’s four gods: What we say about god–& what that says about us, Oxford University Press, New York 2010) four images of God among prison inmates is similar to that in the general population. We then examine whether an inmate’s image of God is associated with the inmate’s worldviews: beliefs and attitudes toward the law, other inmates, moral responsibility, and ultimate meaning and purpose in life. Finally, we test whether an inmate’s belief in a forgiving God and religiousness explain the association. We analyzed data from a survey of 2249 inmates at America’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. We found the distribution of God-images among inmates was the same as that in national samples in terms of rank order. As hypothesized, we also found inmates with an image of an engaged God tended to report lower levels of legal cynicism and sense of illegitimacy of punishment and higher levels of collective efficacy, existential belief, and moral responsibility than those with images of a disengaged God or no God. Finally, we found an inmate’s belief in a forgiving God and religiousness to mediate partly relationships between images of God and the inmate’s worldviews.     

Validity of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale Within a Forensic Inpatient Hospital

Although the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale(BPRS) has been utilized across several clinical settings, its potential utility within forensic psychiatric hospitals has not yet been investigated. Given the diversity of training and background among correctional mental health workers (i.e., psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, recreation therapists, psychologists, social workers,etc.) it is possible that the uniform use of the BPRS among the correctional staff would require extensive training and that substantial “refresher” training may be required to maintain the integrity of rater practices. The present study examined the ability of previously trained forensic mental health professionals to accurately assess psychopathology using the BPRS. Overall,experienced raters demonstrated relatively high concordance rates with “gold standard” ratings across three BPRS training videos (Case 1, Case2 and Case 3). No overall “rater drift” was apparent. However, raters were found to make significantly more errors when rating behavioral observation ratings than for ratings based on self-report patient statements. Findings suggest that ratings done by forensic mental health workers are relatively accurate when compared to “gold standard” ratings established for assessment of community and forensic psychiatric patients. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Measuring Religious Commitment Among Catholics and Protestants: A New Approach

Researchers using survey data to study religious commitment often create additive indices in which respondents receive a "point" on the scale for each behavior in which they engage, implicitly assuming that each activity is equally normative in each religious tradition. This has led some scholars to suggest that these scales can be "biased" in favor of evangelicals. In this paper, we introduce a unique series of survey questions asking respondents how important various activities are "for people of your religion". We use these new measures to generate tradition-specific weights for each component of a religious commitment scale according to the activity's perceived importance. We then present a method for constructing scales when such "importance" items are not available, using the frequency of behavior within each religious tradition as a surrogate for importance. We find that constructing religious commitment scales that take into account the normative differences across religious traditions produces statistically significant differences in the levels of commitment by religious tradition, especially among Roman Catholics. However, the substantive significance is less evident. When various measures of religious commitment are included as independent variables in multivariate models of political attitudes, their performance is remarkably similar. It appears that the standard additive indices of religious commitment commonly utilized by scholars of religion and politics are adequate for most analyses of social and political attitudes.     

Religious Institutions and Political Participation in America

Previous research on religious institutions and political participation finds that churches can increase participation among their members through the development of civic skills and the distinct political histories of religious traditions. This paper examines the various ways religious institutions promote the political participation of their members. We utilize the 1990 Citizen Participation Study to test seven hypotheses about the connections between religious institutions and political participation. We find, contrary to previous work, that church-gained civic skills and religious tradition do not directly affect political participation among those currently active in religious institutions. Rather, churches bring their parishioners more effectively into the political process through the recruitment of members to politics and when members come to see their church activity as having political consequences.