Are Religious People More Prosocial? A Quasi-Experimental Study with Madrasah Pupils in a Rural Community in India

Using quasi-experimental data, this article examines the relationship between religiosity and prosocial behavior. In contrast to previous studies that identify religious people by how often they attend religious services or by their self-reported religiosity, this study compares the behavior of highly devout students who are preparing to enter the clergy to the behavior of other students in a public goods game and in the dictator game. The results show that religious students were significantly more cooperative in the public goods game and significantly more generous in the dictator game than other students.     

The United States Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (2006): New challenges to balancing patient rights and physician responsibilities

Advance health care directives and informed consent remain the cornerstones of patients' right to self-determination regarding medical care and preferences at the end-of-life. However, the effectiveness and clinical applicability of advance health care directives to decision-making on the use of life support systems at the end-of-life is questionable. The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA) has been revised in 2006 to permit the use of life support systems at or near death for the purpose of maximizing procurement opportunities of organs medically suitable for transplantation. Some states have enacted the Revised UAGA (2006) and a few of those have included amendments while attempting to preserve the uniformity of the revised Act. Other states have introduced the Revised UAGA (2006) for legislation and remaining states are likely to follow soon.     

9/11 as a new temporal phase for Islam

Since the bombing of the twin towers, ‘Islam’ as a cultural narrative has entered a new temporal phase which in many ways signifies the re-imagining of a religion through the visual imagery of 9/11 and the global events which have unfolded since the apocalyptic images were first witnessed by the world. The distant proximity of 9/11 and the relocation of the perceived Islamic ‘resurgent atavism’ within the heartlands of power in Western soil constitute the formation of a new sociological imagination of Islam and 9/11 as a new liminal temporality. The association of the religion with a new category of risks in urban sites and the constant state of insecurity in seemingly secure spaces represents a new narrative phase of geo-politics in which the locus of this re-imagining mediated through ICTs, is one that happens not just in faraway places but within the ‘ontological securities’ of Western modernity, posing a liquid threat which is impervious to territorially bounded spheres.     

Factor-analytic structures in the English and Japanese versions of the Objective Measure of Ego-Identity Status (OMEIS)

This research describes an exploratory factor analysis for the purposes of factorial validation for both the English and Japanese versions of the Objective Measure of Ego-Identity Status (OMEIS)—Ideological version (Adams, Bennion, & Huh, 1989). The Japanese OMEIS is a direct translation of the English OMEIS (Ohnishi, 1998). The study reports the factor structure of the OMEIS—Ideological version in English and Japanese. A principal factor analysis (PFA) with both oblique and orthogonal solutions was performed. Alpha reliabilities for the factors are presented. The present research compares and contrasts the factor structures of OMEIS—Ideological version, derived from a U.S. sample and a Japanese sample, comprising women from late adulthood to middle age. Cultural differences between the two sample populations are explored.     

Gender differences in depressive response: The role of social support

The present study investigated the possibility that women's ruminative response style to stressful events is due in part to differential advice that women and men receive from their social support networks. Undergraduates (60 men, 136 women) of various ethnic backgrounds (e.g., 21.4% English, 16.8% West Indian, 12.8% Chinese, 10.7% Italian) indicated the extent to which they would endorse various statements of advice for a stimulus person described as experiencing a negative life event. As predicted, subjects endorsed more ruminative advice for female stimulus persons than for male stimulus persons (p< .02). These findings imply that, since females in stressful situations seem more likely to receive ruminative advice than do their male counterparts, women's greater vulnerability to depressive symptoms may be partly the result of the concomitant dangers of stressful events and potentially harmful advice.     

应激对大鼠行为和部分脑区谷氨酸含量的影响

以旷场试验法测定动物在急、慢性躯体性和心理性应激时的行为变化,以快速断头冷冻匀浆法,用ＨＩＴＡＣＨＩ－８３５氨基酸分析仪测定应激各期视皮层、海马、下丘脑、小脑谷氨酸含量。并对正常动物经侧脑室微量注射Ｌ－ＡＰ４后观察行为变化。结果显示,急性应激期动物行为活动增加,慢性应激期减少：应激时,大鼠部分脑区的谷氨酸含量与对照组相比在不同时期呈显著性差异;侧脑室微量注射Ｌ－ＡＰ４提示行为活动减弱可能与脑内Ｇｌｕ系统的活动有关。     

The concept of the ‘Other’ in modern Arab thought: From Muhammad cAbdu to Abdallah Laroui

The primary condition for the progress, or indeed the survival, of human societies is their effective coalescence into one human society’ (Zurayk 1994, 96).     

Effects of fasting on visual flicker fusion

Two experiments are reported which investigated the effects of fasting on visual flicker fusion (VFF). In Exp. 1 the VFF of 40 undergraduate students, 20 men and 20 women, whose mean age was 22.5 yr., was measured in nonfasting conditions 1 to 2 weeks before and in fasting conditions during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In Exp. 2 the VFF of a comparable group of 15 men and 15 women, whose mean age was 23.2 yr., was measured in a different month in both fasting and nonfasting conditions. Subjects were assigned randomly to these two conditions. Analysis shows that fasting reduced VFF significantly in both experiments. This finding indicates that fasting is likely to reduce perceptual sensitivity. The results were explained in terms of fatigue and physical exhaustion effects produced by fasting.