The Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues: How They Are Viewed Today by Clergy

In 1992 the results of a survey on clergy attitudes toward the traditional deadly sins and the schedule of virtues formulated by Erik H. Erikson were published in Pastoral Psychology (D. Capps, 1992). This study reports the results of a similar survey conducted a decade later. It also compares the results of this clergy survey with the findings of our laity survey published in 2000 in Pastoral Psychology (D. Capps & A. H. Cole, 2000). Clergy were asked to rank order the sins (from most to least destructive), to identify one sin with which they were personally struggling, and to indicate whether they consider a given sin to be more characteristic of men, of women, or of both genders equally. Similar questions were asked concerning the virtues, but from a positive rather than a negative perspective. While the results were generally similar to the earlier clergy survey, there were some modest changes in the way respondents ranked the sins and virtues, indicated their personal identification with them, and viewed their gender relatedness. While the number of women respondents to the 2002 survey was small, differences in the way that clergymen and clergywomen responded to the survey questions are noted. We particularly note that clergy view anger as a much more deadly sin than do laity, and also the consistent finding that respondents tend to struggle personally with sins they consider among the least destructive.

Overparenting and Narcissism in Young Adults: The Mediating Role of Psychological Control

Overparenting, or “helicopter parenting,” can be generally characterized as parenting that is well-intentioned, but over-involved and intrusive. This style of parenting has been especially highlighted in the lives of young adults, who may be inhibited by this form of parenting in the appropriate development of autonomy and independence. Overparenting shares conceptual similarities with parents’ psychological control practices, which involve emotional and psychological manipulation of children (e.g., inducing guilt, withholding love as a form of control). Although these constructs contain key differences, both have been linked to narcissism in young adults, by way of parental over-involvement in children’s lives. Thus, we sought to explore parental psychological control as a mediator between overparenting and narcissism, including in regard to both grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic phenotypes. Participants included 380 young adult college students (age range: 18–26 years) who completed the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, as well as reports of their parents’ behaviors related to overparenting and psychological control. Mediation analyses through Process in SPSS supported the hypothesized role of parental psychological control as a mediator between overparenting and narcissistic traits, including traits related to both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Effect sizes for each analysis were modest. This study further clarifies the nature of overparenting, and speaks to the need for further research in establishing the mechanisms by which overparenting may lead to narcissistic traits among young adults.     

The accessibility of the term “contempt” and the meaning of the unilateral lip curl

Four studies are reported investigating the conditions under which various proposed facial expressions of contempt are labelled “contempt”. Only under forced-choice conditions are any of these expressions labelled “contempt” above chance; free responses are at or below chance. Contrary to predictions from Rosenberg and Ekman's (1995) explanation of poor free-response performance, participants demonstrating the best understanding of “contempt”, and those primed by prior tasks to have the concept readily accessible did not do better than other subjects. Using the forced-choice paradigm, supposedly neutral expressions were labelled “contempt” by 70% of respondents. It is concluded that poor performance in free-response studies is not due to inaccessibility or unfamiliarity of “contempt”, that the unilateral lip curl included in the JACFEE set of expressions of basic emotions (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988) is not decoded as contempt, and that good performance in forced-choice studies results from artifacts of the method.