Creating Mr. Right and Ms. Right: Interpersonal ideals and personal change in newlyweds

Based on research on exchanging information during conflict (e.g., Levinger, 1983) and the energizing effects of negative feelings (e.g., Lewin, 1951; Gottman & Krokoff, 1989), this study explores circumstances in which individuals change, over the years, in fulfillment of their spouses’unmet ideals for them. In a longitudinal study of over 200 African American newlywed couples and White newlywed couples, respondents’ratings were combined to form an index of individuals’change in fulfillment of their partners’initially unmet ideals for them. Predictions were that individuals would change more when they listen and try to understand their partners’feelings during conflict or when they have negative feelings about the functioning of the relationship. Results were that high openness to information exchange during conflict predicted high change for White husbands, White wives, and African American wives, and negative feelings about relationship functioning predicted high change for White wives, African American wives, and African American husbands.     

A TRINITARIAN GRAMMAR OF SIN

This essay offers a critical reading of David Kelsey's hamartiology in Eccentric Existence. I elucidate Kelsey's “trinitarian grammar of sin,” which charts how human lives characteristically “miss the mark” of God's creating, consummating, and reconciling ways of relating to us. Kelsey uses this dynamic pattern of divine relating to illuminate the appropriate responses of the Christian life—faith, hope, and love—and their fundamental distortions. I commend three major contributions of Kelsey's hamartiology: his parsing of the relationship between sin and moral evil, his overturning of modernity's anthropocentric paradigm of sin, and his reconstruction of original sin. I conclude with three clusters of questions relating to: first, Kelsey's root paradigm of sin as idolatry, second, his use of impurity and stain language to describe original sin, and third, what is at stake in crafting theological anthropology in the analytical style of Eccentric Existence.     

The actor–partner interdependence model for categorical dyadic data: A user‐friendly guide to GEE

The actor–partner interdependence model (APIM) has been widely used for the analysis of pairs of individuals who interact with each other. The goal of this article is to detail in a nontechnical way how the APIM for binary or count outcomes can be implemented and how actor and partner effects can be estimated using generalized estimating equations (GEE) methodology. Both SPSS‐ and SAS‐syntax needed to estimate the model and the interpretation of the output are illustrated using data from a study exploring the effect of satisfaction with the relationship before the breakup on unwanted pursuit behavior after the breakup in formerly married partners. The use of this GEE method will allow researchers to test a wide array of research hypotheses.     

Race and Cognitive-Ability Test Performance: The Mediating Effects of Test Preparation, Test-Taking Strategy Use and Self-Eff icacy

Test-taking strategy use, cognitive-ability test preparation, and test-taking self-efficacy were examined as possible mediators of the relationship between race and cognitiveability test performance. We hypothesized that African Americans would report using fewer test-taking strategies and less test preparation when compared to White Americans. In addition, we proposed that Afiican Americans would report lower levels of test-taking self-efficacy when faced with a cognitive-ability test. It was expected that these 3 variables would mediate the relationship between race and cognitive-ability test performance. Using a sample of 170 college students, results indicated that African Americans reported using more ineffective test-taking strategies, reported participating in more cognitiveability test preparation, and reported higher levels of test-taking self-efficacy when compared to White Americans. A portion of the difference in performance on a cognitiveability test between African Americans and White Americans could be attributed to the use of ineffective strategies and test preparation.