Glimmers of the infinite: The tragedy of moral injury

Moral injury is a complex wound of the soul affecting many veterans returning from combat. One dimension of moral injury is the shattering of faith, in which service members invest their all into a cause in hope for ultimate fulfillment, only to be morally disappointed by the gruesome reality of warfare. This article will explore the transcendent values that attract service members to military service, and the shattering of faith that can happen during combat, and then suggest an approach for church members to support veterans as they journey on the path to regaining their faith and healing their soul.     

Who Cares If They Need Help? The Deservingness Heuristic,Humanitarianism, and Welfare Opinions

Citizens’ welfare opinions are highly susceptible to cues about welfare recipients’ deservingness. Extant research argues that this deservingness heuristic is a universal feature of human help‐giving psychology, implying that all citizens, regardless of their values, are evenly affected by deservingness cues. This article suggests that the deservingness heuristic is much more conditional than previously appreciated. Specifically, its influence on welfare opinions is conditioned by humanitarianism: the belief that others in need should be helped. The more people adhere to this value, the more they need information that signals whether others are genuinely needy. Citizens should thus rely more on the deservingness heuristic the stronger their humanitarian values are. I find support for this argument in three survey experiments (two nationally representative), where citizens are exposed to cues that welfare recipients are either lazy (undeserving) or unlucky (deserving). These findings have important implications for our understanding of citizens’ welfare opinions.     

A New Theological Anthropology for Developing Resiliency and Healing from Combat*

Moral injury is a complex wound of the soul affecting many veterans returning from combat. This article will propose that a blended theological anthropology, which incorporates Irenaeus’s understanding of spiritual growth and Augustine’s focus on individual accountability and sin, will better foster healing and growth from morally traumatic experiences. In order to do so, I will introduce elements of the psychological paradigm of posttraumatic growth with a theological anthropology I develop in order to propose a mindset which I believe will increase resiliency to the morally challenging environment of combat.     

The Bergen 4-day treatment for OCD: four years follow-up of concentrated ERP in a clinical mental health setting

There are few long-term follow-up studies on psychological treatment of anxiety disorders carried out in clinical mental health settings, so called effectiveness studies. The present paper presents a four year follow-up of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder treated by the Bergen 4-day treatment (B4DT), a concentrated form of exposure and response prevention (ERP). A total of 77 obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) patients received treatment during four consecutive days and were assessed with the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) pre, post, and at follow-ups after 3 and 6 months, and 4 years post-treatment. The Y-BOCS mean score changed from 25.9 at pre- to 10.0 post-treatment and 9.9 at long-term follow-up. The proportion fulfilling the strict international consensus criteria for remission was 73% at post-treatment and 69% at follow-up. When taking declining rate, attrition rate, remission, relapse, and further improvement during the follow-up period into account, 72% were recovered on a long-term basis. A comparison with previously published effectiveness studies of ERP indicated that the 4-day treatment yielded significantly higher proportions of remission at post-treatment and recovery at follow-up, as well as within-group effect size on the Y-BOCS. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Perspectives on consumer decision making: an integrated approach

In the consumer behaviour literature several perspectives on consumer decision making have been considered, including the ‘value perspective’, the ‘information processing perspective’, the ‘emotional perspective’ and ‘cue utilisation theory’. In this paper, a framework which integrates several perspectives on consumer decision making and hypothesises possible links between several basic constructs is developed. The framework is tested by the use of two experimental designs. The results of this study support the complexity of consumer decision making with the following findings. First, consumers do not use their cognitive and affective skills independently, rather they affect each other. Secondly, the cognitive, evaluative constructs of quality and attitude had significant direct effects on buying intention in both experiments, whereas the affective construct of emotion had no significant effects on buying intention in both experiments. Thirdly, in both experiments price affected perceived quality, which in turn affected attitude, which in turn affected buying intention. At the same time, price had no direct effect on buying intention. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Symbol-string sensitivity and adult performance in lexical decision

In this study of adult readers, we used a symbol-string task to assess participants' sensitivity to the position of briefly presented, non-alphabetic but letter-like symbols. We found that sensitivity in this task explained a significant proportion of sample variance in visual lexical decision. Based on a number of controls, we show that this relationship cannot be explained by other factors including: chronological age, intelligence, speed of processing and/or concentration, short term memory consolidation, or fixation stability. This approach represents a new way to elucidate how, and to what extent, individual variation in pre-orthographic visual and cognitive processes impinge on reading skills, and the results suggest that limitations set by visuo-spatial processes constrain visual word recognition.     

Does social identification harm or serve as a buffer? The impact of social identification on anger after experiencing social discrimination

Research on targets' affective reactions to social discrimination has not yet addressed self- and other-directed anger at the same time. Four studies tested the hypothesis that the perceived cause of negative feedback moderates the impact of social identification on self-directed anger. In Studies 1 and 2, high levels of social identification led to less self-directed anger when negative feedback was attributed to social discrimination but not when it was attributed either to other external causes or internally. In Study 3, a cross-lagged design showed that higher identification led to less self-directed anger when negative feedback was attributed to social discrimination but not the other way around. This effect was found using scenarios (Studies 1-3) and also when using the recollection of personal experiences to manipulate attribution (Study 4). These results indicate that following social discrimination, social identification protects the self and does not increase individual vulnerability.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Fallacies

This appearance condition of fallacies refers to the phenomenon of weak arguments, or moves in argumentation, appearing to be okay when really they aren’t. Not all theorists agree that the appearance condition should be part of the conception of fallacies but this essay explores some of the consequences of including it. In particular, the differences between committing a fallacy, causing a fallacy and observing a fallacy are identified. The remainder of the paper is given over to discussing possible causes of mistakenly perceiving weak argumentation moves as okay. Among these are argument caused misperception, perspective caused misperception, discursive environment caused misperception and perceiver caused misperception. The discussion aims to be sufficiently general so that it can accommodate different models and standards of argumentation that make a place for fallacies.

     

Self-concept changes during youth-home placement of adolescents

Youth status offenders typically present both mental health and behavior problems. This study describes a youth placement program and demonstrates self-concept enhancement through the program. Specific changes for boys and girls and different family structures are discussed.     

Global increase in response latencies by early middle age: complexity effects in individual performances

Ten young women (age 20 to 22 years) and 10 middle-aged women (age 36 to 44 years) served as subjects in choice reaction time, letter classification, and abstract matching-to-sample tasks. In each of seven conditions, the older group responded more slowly than the younger group. Age differences showed a complexity effect. That is, differences between the latencies of young and old subjects increased as the latency of the young subjects increased. Both linear and power functions accurately described the relation between the latencies of the middle-aged and young adult groups. This was true not only for the relation between average latencies but also for the relation between corresponding quartiles of latency distributions. Similar results were observed at the individual level: All middle-aged subjects showed complexity effects, and, for each middle-aged subject, the relation between her latencies and those of the average young adult was well described by linear and power functions. These findings indicate that age-related slowing is apparent by age 40, and that complexity effects are observable in individual performances. This slowing is global and not specific to particular tasks, as indicated by the fact that the latencies of older adults can be predicted directly from those of younger adults without regard to the nature of the task.