“Authoritarianism” and Agreement with Things Authoritative

The use of personality and attitudinal questionnaires in private executive and military samples is briefly reviewed. The need for evidence regarding the factor similarity of such questionnaires in comparative studies is noted. Such a comparative factorial study of an abbreviated version of the Shure-Meeker (11) Personality/Attitude Schedule (PAS) is reported. In terms of the general scales examined, three of the four scales emerge in both samples. The order of emergence, as well as the number and item content of the factors, differs slightly between the two samples. Caution is suggested in assuming factor similarity across samples in comparative studies utilizing the PAS and other personality and attitudinal instruments.     

Discrepant Data and Improbable Results: An Examination of Vohs,Mead, and Goode (2006)

A highly cited article by Vohs, Mead, and Goode (2006) reported several experiments in which an incidental reminder of money produced large effects on subsequent behaviors unrelated to money. We attempted 2 high-powered direct replications of the first experiment, which found that money-primed subjects worked on a puzzle nearly twice as long as controls before quitting. The replication studies showed no evidence of money priming. Moreover, 25% of the subjects in our studies solved the puzzle correctly or incorrectly, whereas none reportedly did so in the original study. We also list anomalies in the reported results of the original study.     

Effects of extensive dual-task practice on processing stages in simultaneous choice tasks

Schumacher et al. Psychological Science 12:101–108, (2001) demonstrated the elimination of most dual-task costs (“perfect time-sharing”) after extensive dual-task practice of a visual and an auditory task in combination. For the present research, we used a transfer methodology to examine this practice effect in more detail, asking what task-processing stages were sped up by this dual-task practice. Such research will be essential to specify mechanisms associated with the practice-related elimination of dual-task costs. In three experiments, we introduced postpractice transfer probes focusing on the perception, central response-selection, and final motor-response stages. The results indicated that the major change achieved by dual-task practice was a speed-up in the central response-selection stages of both tasks. Additionally, perceptual-stage shortening of the auditory task was found to contribute to the improvements in time-sharing. For a better understanding of such time-sharing, we discuss the contributions of the present findings in relation to models of practiced dual-task performance.     

A Review of Mortality Research on Clergy and Other Religious Professionals

An exhaustive literature search was undertaken to find studies on mortality rates among clergy. A total of twelve studies, published between 1959 and 2000, were identified that examined mortality among American and European clergy. All but one of the reports found lower all-cause death rates for clergy compared to the people in general population of similar age. Protestant ministers consistently were found to have more than a 25% mortality advantage in various studies. Catholic nuns had a mortality advantage of roughly 20%–25%, whereas the mortality advantage of Catholic priests was just over 10%. Possible factors contributing to the lower death rates of clergy are discussed.     

A Psychological Biography for Jesus: Responding to Donald Capps'

Don Capps employed a Freudian Model and current biblical criticism models of Crossan, Borg, and others to evaluate the biblical data regarding the person and self-concept of Jesus of Nazareth. This article points to some vulnerabilities for serious criticism inherent in Capps's model and suggests the necessity of a wider range of psychological models for screening the data available on Jesus' development as a person in order to draw conclusions about his nature and motivations. Capps concludes that Jesus was a melancholic personality who was at odds with his society because he and his family were defamed regarding his problematic birth story, resulting in the violent symbolic action of cleansing the temple, thus expressing his arrival at self-confidence and self-affirmation.     

Guest Editorial

Pastoral Psychology -     

Psychological Aspects of Biblical Apocalypticism

Pastoral Psychology - This essay develops and illustrates the role of psychological process in the development of the Master Stories of Judaism and Christianity. This formative process is shaped by...     

Wayne G. Rollins' Soul and Psyche: An Appreciation

Professor Wayne G. Rollins has written a remarkably important book on the history of the interface between psychological and biblical studies. It is called Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological Perspective. It is so comprehensive that it reaches from the words of Jesus of Nazareth to the models of Kohut and Winnicott, from the First Century to the Twenty-First, from Freud to Fowler and beyond. He definitively addresses the full range of issues relating to the psychological critique of the Bible and the history of Biblical Psychology.